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INSCRIBED 

TO THE 

MEMORY OF OUR FOREFATHERS 



The memory of our fathers should be the watchword of 
liberty throughout the land ; for, imperfect as they were, the 
world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, 
behold their like again. Such models of moral excellence, such 
apostles of civil and religious liberty, such shades of the illustrious 
dead looking down upon their descendants with approbation or 
reproof, according as they follow or depart from the good way, 
constitute a censorship inferior only to the eye of God; and to 
ridicule them is national suicide. — Beecher. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 

The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a 
gentleman and a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health and 
applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. 

These manly sentiments, in private life, make the good 
citizen ; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say, when 
brought to the test, I shall be invincible. I pray God I may 
never be brought to the melancholy trial ; but if ever I should, 
it will then be known how I can reduce to practice principles 
which I know to be founded in truth. 

— James Otis, February, 176i. 

It was of this address that John Adams said: 

"THEN AND THERE, THE CHILD, INDEPEN- 
DENCE, WAS BORN." 

I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though 
it was revealed from Heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine 
were to perish, and only one of a thousand to survive and enjoy 
his liberty. One such freeman must possess more virtue and 
enjoy more happiness than a thousand slaves; let him propagate 
his like, and transmit to them what he hath so nobly preserved. 
— Samuel Adams, "Father of the American Revolution," from 
a speech in the Congress held in Philadelphia in 1774. 



THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN 
INDEPENDENCE 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessan 

: for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected 

them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth 

i the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of 

j nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of 

mankind requires that they should declare the causes which 

impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are 

| created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certair 

inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty and the 

pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments 

are instituted among men, deriving their just rights from the 

consent of the governed ; that, whenever any form of government 

■ becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people 

i to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying 

its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in 

I such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safet} 

and happiness. 



In the blood of those patriots at Lexington the Declaration of 
Independence was really written. — Moncure D. Conway. 



William Cobbett said: "Whoever may have written the Declara 
tion, Thomas Paine was its author." See Paine's pamphlet "Common 
Sense," published January 1, 1776 (six months prior to the presentation 
of Thomas Jefferson's manuscript in Independence Hall), in which for 
the first time was advocated an American Republic of free and inde 
pendent States. 



MEMORIAL 



of 



CAPTAIN THOMAS ABBEY 



His Ancestors and Descendants of 




THE ABBEY FAMILY 

PATHFINDERS, SOLDIERS AND PIONEER SETTLERS 

OF CONNECTICUT, ITS WESTERN RESERVE 

IN OHIO AND THE GREAT WEST. 



Inscription and Seal at the Base of the Pedestal of the Statue. 



ERECTED BY HIS GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER 

FRANCES MARIA ABBEY 

WIFE OF 

JOEL FRANCIS FREEMAN 

1836-1910 




V 



*•--. 



Her sons : 
ALDEN FREEMAN. 

Member of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut. 

FRANCIS AUSTIN FREEMAN, 

1869-1889. 

Her daughters : 

EDITH FREEMAN DALLETT, 

1871-1914. 

GERTRUDE ABBEY FREEMAN, 

and the granddaughter, 

FRANCES DALLETT KISSEL. 

Names of the donors on 3 sides of the Base of the Pedestal. 



The Spirit of 1 775 Expressed in Sculpture 



THE STATUE OF CAPTAIN ABBEY 




SHERRY EDMUNDSON FRY, Sculptor 

Daniel Chester French, whose first public work was "The Minute Man," unveiled at Concord Bridge 
on April 19, 1875, loaned Mr. Fry the Colonial costume used in modeling this statue 



THOMAS ABBEY 

Bom April 1 1, 1731. Died June 3, 181 1. 

A SOLDIER IN THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS. 
TOOK PART IN THE CAPTURE OF FORT TICONDE- 
ROGA, 1758, AND THE CONQUEST OF CANADA, 1761. 
CORPORAL FIRST REGIMENT, CONNECTICUT 
TROOPS, MAY 25 TO NOVEMBER 22, 1758. LIEUTEN- 
ANT IN CAPTAIN SETH KING'S COMPANY, APRIL 1 
TO DECEMBER 1, 1761. 

ACCORDING TO TRADITION, AT THE LEXINGTON 
ALARM IN APRIL, 1775, DRUMMED THE CONGREGA- 
TION OUT OF THE MEETING HOUSE, WHICH STOOD 
NEAR THIS SPOT. MARCHED TO THE RELIEF OF 
BOSTON WITH THE ENFIELD COMPANY, LED BY 
MAJOR NATHANIEL TERRY AND CAPTAIN JOHN 
SIMONS, JR., LIEUTENANT IN CAPTAIN HEZEKIAH 
PARSON'S COMPANY, 1775. 

MAY 9, 1776, APPOINTED BY THE GENERAL AS- 
SEMBLY OF CONNECTICUT FIRST LIEUTENANT IN 
CAPTAIN ABEL PEASE'S COMPANY. SERVED UNDER 
GENERAL GATES AT TICONDEROGA AND VICINITY, 
JUNE TO NOVEMBER, 1776. ADJUTANT CHESTER'S 
CONNECTICUT STATE REGIMENT, JUNE TO DECEM- 
BER, 1776. COMMISSIONED CAPTAIN JANUARY 1, 
1777. APPOINTED BY THE COUNCIL OF SAFETY, 
FEBRUARY 1, 1777, TO COLONEL SAMUEL WYLLYS'S 
REGIMENT IN NEW YORK. HELD THIS COMMAND 
UNTIL NOVEMBER 15, 1778. 

THE MEETING HOUSE WHICH STOOD HERE IS 
NOW THE TOWN H \LL. IT WAS BUILT IN 1775 BY 
IS\AC KIBBE AND SUCCEEDED THE CHURCH WHICH 
STOOD ON THE GREEN ONE-THIRD MILE TO THE 
SOUTH. THERE, JULY 8, 1741, JONATHAN EDWARDS 
PREACHED THE FAMOUS SERMON, "SINNERS IN 
THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD." 

Inscription on the Face of the Pedestal. 



11 




TV-4^- 




From the Portrait by G. P. A. Healy, 1808-1894. 
Painted in 1863. 



12 



THE AUTHOR OF "THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM" 

The poem which follows first appeared in The Atlantic 
Monthly for May, 1878, in very good company. It was preceded 
by an article by Henry James and was followed by one by Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich. The number also contained poems by Professor 
Boyesen and "H. H.," as well as articles from the pens of 
Thoreau, W. D. Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, Richard Grant 
White, J. T. Trowbridge, ''Charles Egbert Craddock" and "Mark 
Twain." 

Benjamin Franklin Taylor was a man of mark. He was 
graduated in 1838 from Madison University, of which his father 
later became president, after its name was changed to Colgate 
University. For nearly twenty years he was literary editor of 
a Chicago newspaper and in the Civil War made a reputation as 
a war correspondent. After the war he traveled extensively and 
achieved success as a lecturer along with W'endell Phillips and 
Bayard Taylor. His poems went through many editions, and 
Whittier said of them : "I do not know of any one who so 
well reproduces the scenes of long ago." The London "Times" 
called him "The Oliver Goldsmith of America" and declared 
some of his battle pictures to be the finest ever written in the 
English language. Besides his collected poems, which ran into 
five editions, and one novel, "Theophilus Trent," he published ten 
other volumes of poetry and prose. 

THE DATE OF "THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM." 
The fighting at Lexington took place on Wednesday, April 
19, 1775, and it is well established that the news of it reached 
these parts on the following day. It is recorded that the minute- 
men of Suffield, three miles west of Enfield across the Con- 
necticut River, were entertained in Springfield during the night 
of Thursday, April 20, having previously marched there from 
Suffield. Certainly Enfield, on the chief highway between Boston 
and New York, got the news as soon as Suffeld, which lies off 
to one side of the main artery of travel. Of course, it is 100 
miles to Boston, but the correspondence committees of the col- 
onists had been active for over two years, and the aggressions 
of the royalist government were promptly reported all the way 
from Massachusetts to Virginia bv dispatch riders, with relays of 
men and fresh horses. The midnight ride of Paul Revere is 

13 



simply typical of the Lexington Alarm as it was spread over the 
whole of New England. Israel Putnam, like Captain Abbey a 
veteran of the French and Indian wars, was plowing in his field 
when the news reached him. He left his plow in the furrow, 
turned the oxen loose, mounted his horse and reached Cambridge, 
68 miles from his Connecticut home in Pomfret, on Friday morn- 
ing, April 21, some accounts say at sunrise. 

I am therefore of the opinion that the episode of "The 
Captain's Drum" took place on the afternoon qf Thursday, April 
20, 1775, and not on Sunday, as set forth in the following poem. 
This does not, however, impair the effectiveness and general truth 
of Mr. Taylor's poem, because, during the eighteenth century 
the Thursday Lecture was a recognized religious service of the 
first importance in the Congregational churches throughout New 
England. 

In the Life of Jonathan Edwards it is stated that, after his 
fame as a preacher had spread widely, in July, 1731, he was 
prevailed upon, notwithstanding his youth and modesty (he was 
then approaching 28), to preach the Thursday Lecture in Boston. 
"Divers ministers" found him to be a workman that need not be 
ashamed before his brethren, printed his sermon, and heartily 
rejoiced in the special favor of Providence to the happy church 
of Northampton. 

It is therefore easy to believe, as the episode is closely asso- 
ciated with a church service now obsolete and almost forgotten, 
that in the lapse of time it came to pass that people thought the 
drum-beating occurred during a Sunday service, themselves 
knowing of no other religious service of equal importance. 

Rev. George W. Winch, who was pastor of the Enfield 
Church, named the Thursday Lecture as the proper date, and at 
the same time quoted a verse from Mr. Taylor's poem in the 
chapter on Enfield which he wrote for "The Memorial History 
of Hartford County, Conn." This work was edited by James H. 
Trumbull, for 25 years president of the Connecticut Historical 
Society. 

In the complete edition of his poetical works, issued the 
year before he died, Mr. Taylor states that Aholiab Johnson, of 
Enfield, furnished him with the historical data on which his poem 
is based. Mr. Johnson lived opposite the site of the old meeting 
house where Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon. 
Mr. Taylor says that he "lived worthily and well." His son, J. 

14. 



Warren Johnson, lives in the same house, and has aided greatly 
in the preparation of this pamphlet. 

There was nothing irreverent in Thomas Abbey's summoning 
the people from church by beating a drum. His news was vital 
and demanded immediate action. It was the decisive moment in 
our Revolution, and he used the usual and accepted method of 
assembling the people in that early day. Throughout New 
England at that period congregations were called to church ser- 
vice by the beating of a drum through the town. 



OLD CONCORD.* 

1 came to Concord in the evening. Care, 
And strutting Pride, and painted Folly, these 
Were all forgotten with the solemn trees, 
The clean, white walls of Concord. Everywhere 
Were wedded peace and order. Yet what blare 
Of breathless bugles on the sparkling breeze ! 
What scarlet foe that battles and that flees ! 
What beckonings and what voices haunt the air ! 

For it was spring in Concord, and the sight 
Brought back the glories of that deathless year, 
The muffled tread of armies in the night, 
The ghostly hoofs, the shouts, and Paul Revere, 
The Old North Bridge, the men who did not fear 
To die for home and liberty and right. 

Earl Simonson. 
Concord, Mass., May 9, 1916. 



* Read Enfield in place of Concord throughout th's poem and the application 
will prove equally true. It was another Paul Revere, unknown to fame, who carried 
the alarm to Enfield. 



15 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775 EXPRESSED IN VERSE 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM 

A Tradition of Enfield, April 20, 1775 

I 

In Pilgrim land one Sabbath day 

The winter lay like sheep about 
The ragged pastures mullein gray ; 

The April sun shone in and out, 
The showers swept by in fitful flocks, 

And eaves ticked fast like mantel clocks. 

II 

And now and then a wealthy cloud 

Would wear a ribbon broad and bright, 
And now and then a winged crowd 

Of shining* azure flash in sight ; 

So rainbows bend and blue-birds fly 
And violets show their bits of sky. 

Ill 

To Enfield church throng all the town 
In quilted hood and bombazine, 
In beaver hat with flaring crown 
And quaint vandyke and victorine, 
And buttoned boys in roundabout 
From calyx collars blossom out. 

IV 

Bandanas wave their feeble fire 

And footstoves tinkle up the aisle, 
A gray-haired Elder leads the choir 

And girls in linsey-woolsey smile. 
So back to life the beings glide 

Whose very graves have ebbed and died. 

V 

One hundred years have waned, and yet 

We call the roll, and not in vain, 
For one whose flint-lock musket set 

The echoes wild round Fort Duquesne, 
And swelled! the battle's powder smoke 

Ere Revolution's thunders woke. 

SOUTH SIDE OF PEDESTAL. 

* "Shivering" in The Atlantic Monthly; changed to "shininj 
the collected poems. 

f Originally "smelled." 

17 



Yl 

Lo, Thomas Abbey answers "Here!" 
Within the dull long-metre place; 

That day upon the parson's ear 

And trampling down his words of grace 

A horseman's gallop rudely beat 

Along the splashed and empty street. 



VII 

The rider drew his dripping rein 
And then a letter wasp-nest gray 

That ran: "The Concord Minute-Men 
And Red-Coats had a fight to-day. 

To Captain Abbey this with speed." 
Ten little words to tell the deed. 



VIII 

The Captain read, struck out for home 

The old quickstep of battle born, 
Slung on once more a battered drum 

That bore a painted unicorn, 
Then right-about as whirls a torch 

He stood once more before the sacred porch J— * 



IX 

And then a murmuring of bees 

Broke in upon the house of prayer, 

And then a wind-song swept the trees, 
And then a snarl from wolfish lair, 

And then a charge of grenadiers, 

And then a flight of drum-beat cheers. 



X 

So drum and doctrine rudely blent, 
The casements rattled strange accord, 

No mortal knew what either meant, 

'Twas double-drag and Holy Word, 

Thus saith the drum and thus the Lord. 

The Captain raised so wild a rout 
He drummed the congregation out! 

EAST SIDE OF PEDESTAL. 

18 



XI 

The people gathered round amazed, 
The soldier bared his head and spoke, 

And every sentence burned and blazed 
As trenchant as a sabre-stroke: 
' 'Tis time to pick the flint to-day, 
To sling the knapsack and away — 



XII 

"The Green of Lexington is red 

With British Red-Coats, brothers' blood! 
In rightful cause the earliest dead 

Are always best beloved of God. 
Mark time ! Now let the march begin ! 

All bound for Boston, fall right in !" 



XIII 

Then rub-a-dub the drum jarred on, 
The throbbing roll of battle beat! 

"Fall in, my men \" and one by one, 

They rhymed the tune with heart and feet 

And so they made a Sabbath march 
To glory 'neath the elm-tree arch. 



XIV 

The Continental line unwound 

Along the church-yard's breathless sod, 
And holier grew the hallowed ground 

Where Virtue slept and Valor trod. 
Two hundred strong that April day 

They rallied out and marched away. 



XV 

Brigaded there at Bunker Hill 

Their names are writ on Glory's page, 
The brave old Captain's Sunday drill 

Has drummed its way across the Age. 

Benjamin Franklin Taylor. 
Enfield, April, 1875. 1819—1887. 

NORTH SIDE OF PEDESTAL. 

19 




THE TOWN HALL OF ENFIELD 

From 1775 to 1848 this building was the Meeting House, 
and stood in the middle of the Green. It was the scene of the 
episode commemorated by the statue of Captain Abbey, and was 
the third building in which the Enfield congregation has wor- 
shipped. 

The Abbey Memorial stands close to the spot where this ven- 
erable structure was originally erected and where it stood for 73 
years as a house of worship. The Town Meeting is justly 
regarded as the cradle of American Independence, and this build- 
ing, by reason of its traditions, both as a place of worship, where 
three generations of the people of Enfield were baptized, married 
and their funerals held, and also as the Town Hall, where three 
later generations have fulfilled their political duties as free Amer- 
ican citizens, deserves, for all future time, to be cherished with 
affection and with pride by a religious and liberty-loving people. 

Enfield was generous in financial support of the brave soldiers 
whom it sent to the front, both in the Revolution and in the Civil 
War. The initiating force and the depth of the spirit of freedom 
in the people of this town are shown by their action in town meet- 
ing on March 31, 1777, of which we give a fac-simile on this page. 
When you reflect that this resolution was passed 57 years before 
England freed the slaves in her West Indian colonies and 85 
years before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, you 
will begin to realize how deep-rooted and how strong is the love 

20 



RECORD OF TOWN 
MEETING. 

Enfield's Protest Against 
Slavery in 1777. 




of liberty in the men and women of Enfield, not only for them- 
selves but for the rest of mankind. 

It should not be forgotten that Connecticut, in proportion 
to population, furnished more soldiers in the Revolution than 
any other of the thirteen colonies. This was disclosed through 
the investigations of an Enfield man who was, in his day, an 
encyclopaedia of knowledge. This was Dr. John Chauncey Pease, 
1782-1859, who assisted Royal R. Hinman in preparing the well- 
known volume, "Historical Collections of Connecticut in the 
American Revolution." 

In connection with the Lexington Alarm, the expression, 
"Marched for the relief of Boston," showed the extent of their 
sympathies and the nature of the service intended. The people 
of the colonies were, to a certain extent, prepared for such an 
alarm. On September 1st of the previous year, 1774, the King's 
troops had been sent from Boston to Cambridge to carry off some 
pieces of cannon belonging to the militia. This action was the 
immediate occasion of the proceedings against Lieutenant-Gover- 
nor Oliver on the following day, when, under compulsion of an 
assemblage of 4,000 excited citizens, he was forced to resign his 
seat in the Council, to which, in violation of the charter of Massa- 
chusetts, he had been illegally appointed by George III. Further 
particulars of this event, which so nearly precipitated the out- 
break of the Revolution seven months and a half before the 
battle of Lexington, and how bloodshed was then averted by the 
forethought of a peace-loving Loyalist, will be found on page 74. 

The response to the appeal from Lexington in 1775 was not 
the official action of this colony, nor, on the other hand, an 
impromptu movement of individuals without previous organiza- 
tion. An uprising of armed men might have partaken of a mob 
character, as in Cambridge in 1774, and the militia as such could 
only be called out by the Governor or the Legislature. It was 
rather a movement of the townsmen marching under their militia 
organization. The gatherings thus became orderly as well as 
spontaneous, and represented the town spirit, shown previously 
in protests and resolutions. It appears from the records that in 
some cases, as in Suffield, the companies or trainbands collected 
and marched off under their officers without further orders; in 
other cases the colonels, taking the lead, called out a certain 
number of their men and directed them forthwith to the point 
of danger ; in a few cases, as occurred here in Enfield, volunteer 
companies were organized for the special service. 

22 



How^Shall We Preserve the Liberties for Which 
the Men of 1775 Fought? 



AMERICA MUST ARM ITSELF AND ALSO TEACH 

DEMOCRATIC IDEALS TO IMMIGRANTS LEST 

GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE 

PEOPLE PERISH FROM THE EARTH. 

[Speech of EHhu Root before the New York Bar Association, 
January 15, 1916.] 

That "Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty*' is an 
eternal truth, and the principles of American liberty to-day stand 
in need of a renewed devotion on the part of the American people. 
We have forgotten this in our vast material prosperity. We have 
grown so rich, we have lived in ease and comfort and peace so 
long that we have forgotten to what we owe these agreeable 
incidents of life. 

We must be prepared to defend our individual liberty in two 
ways. We must be prepared to do it first by force of arms 
against all external aggression. God knows I love peace and L 
despise all foolish and wicked wars, but I do not wish for my 
country the peace of slavery, or dishonor, or injustice, or pol- 
troonery. I want to see in my country the spirit that beat in the 
hearts of the men at Concord Bridge, who were just and God- 
fearing men, but who were ready to fight for their liberty. And 
if the hundred million people of America have the spirit and it is 
made manifest, they won't have to fight. 

But there is another way in which we must be prepared to 
defend it, and this is necessary to the first. We must be prepared 
to defend it within as against all indifference and false doctrine, 
against all willingness to submit individual independence to the 
control of practical tyranny, whether it be of a monarch or of a 
majority. 

Another circumstance which we ought not to lose sight of 
is the fact that a vast number of people have come to the United 
States within very recent times from those countries of Europe 
which differ so widely in their fundamental conceptions of law 
and personal freedom from ourselves. 

The millions of immigrants who have come from the Conti- 
nent of Europe have come from communities which have not the 
traditions of individual liberty, but the traditions of state control 
over liberty ; they have come from communities in which the 
courts are part of the administrative system of the government, 
not independent tribunals to do justice between the individual 

• 24 



and the government; they have come from communities in which 
the law is contained in codes framed and imposed upon the 
people by superior power, and not communities like ours, in 
which law is the growth of the life of the people, made by the 
people through their own recognition of their needs. 

It is a slow process to change the attitude of the individual 
toward law, toward political principles. It cannot be done in a 
moment, and this great mass of men, good men. good women, 
without our traditions, but with entirely different traditions, will 
change us unless we change them. 

Fifteen per cent, of the lawyers of Xew York City are 
foreign born. Thirty per cent, of the lawyers of New York City 
are either foreign born or of foreign parents. And the great 
mass of them have in their blood, with all the able and brilliant 
and noble men among them — have in their blood necessarily the 
traditions of the countries from which they came. They cannot 
help it. 

They will hold those traditions until they are expelled by 
the spirit of American institutions. That is a question of time. 
And somebody has got to look after it. Somebody has got to 
make the spirit of those institutions vocal. Somebody has got 
to exhibit belief in them, trust in them, devotion to them, loyalty 
to them, or you cannot win this great body from Continental 
Europe to a true understanding of and loyalty to our institutions. 

Here is a great new duty for the bar ; and if we have not 
been hypocrites during all these years in which we have been 
standing up in court and appealing to the principles of the law, 
appealing to the principles of our Constitution, demanding justice 
according to the rules of the common law for our clients ; if we 
have not been hypocrites, we will come to the defense and the 
assertion — the triumphant assertion — of these principles we have 
been asserting. 

The whole business of government in which we are all con- 
cerned is becoming serious, grave, threatening. No man in 
America has any right to rest contented and easv and indifferent, 
for never before, not even in the time of the Civil War. have all 
the energies and all the devotion of the American democracy been 
demanded for the perpetuity of American institutions, for the 
continuance of the American Pepublic against foes without and 
more insidious foes within, than in the year of grace. 1016'. 



2S 




FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. 

Legally known as the First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield. This is the fourth structure in 
which this congregation has worshipped. 



ENFIELD CHURCH 

This church is looked upon by architects as one of the finest 
examples of the Colonial style in New England. It reminds the 
traveller of those beautiful parish churches in London, England, 
the spires of which Sir Christopher Wren set like candlesticks 
around his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral. 

The first house of worship in Enfield was built of logs in 
1684, and stood in or close to the cemetery. The second church 
edifice was built in 1706. The outlines of its foundation, about 
forty feet square, may be seen opposite the post-office. Rachel 
Kibbe, 1688-1786, who married first Jonathan Bush, 1681-1746, 
and secondly Lieutenant John Meacham, remembered the raising 
of this second meeting house when she was eighteen years old, 
and said there was "a great frolick which lasted three days." She 
was the grandmother of Hannah Bush, 1744-1801, wife of Colonel 
Amos Alden, and died in her 100th year. 

JONATHAN EDWARDS'S FAMOUS ENFIELD SERMON. 

The second church building has an honorable place in the 
religious history of America. It was there, on July 8, 1741, that 
Jonathan Edwards preached his famous Enfield sermon, "Sinners 
in the Hands of an Angry God." This sermon was the high-tide 
in a revival known as "The Great Awakening," commenced in 
his own church at Northampton, Mass., which swept over the 
whole of New England. The great preacher was born in East 
Windsor, about nine miles from Enfield Church, on October 5, 




THE BIRTHPLACE OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
"A very expensive house, decorated with many elegant ornaments, 
it took a year to build, was completed about January 1, 1697, and 
1 stood until 1813."— Stiles's "Ancient Windsor." 

27 




U-7) n a hza n Ccl n?a r^~" 

PORTRAIT AND AUTOGRAPH OF JONATHAN EDWARDS 



1/03, in the house which his grandfather, Richard Edwards, of 
Hartford, built for his father, Rev. Timothy Edwards. An 
invitation to the "Ordination Ball" given in this house in May, 
1698, is still in existence, signed by Rev. Timothy Edwards. 
This dance at the parson's in East Windsor and the "3 days' 
frolick ' at the church-raising in Enfield eight years later, are 
pretty reliable evidence that our forefathers were not so straight- 
laced, so dour and solemn as we have been led to believe. They 
were perhaps more broad-minded and liberal than some of their 
descendants who frown on innocent amusements and the joys of 
youth and gayety. 

Eeside being President of Princeton College and the fore- 
most man that Connecticut has produced, Jonathan Edwards is 
generally regarded as the ablest metaphysician of the period be- 
tween Leibnitz and Kant and as the greatest theologian of the 



18th century. A believer in equality, in the oneness of mankind. 
in freedom of inquiry, and a lover of liberty, he was an abso- 



28 



lute democrat and a forerunner of the Revolution. It has been 
said if you would know the workings of the mind of New Eng- 
land in the middle of the 18th century and the throbbing of its 
heart you must study the life and the words of Jonathan Edwards. 

THE WOLCOTT FAMILY. 
In the congregation of Timothy Edwards the most prominent 
man was Roger Wolcott, who in 1750 became Governor of Con- 
necticut. His son, Oliver Wolcott, was a signer of the Declara- 
tion of Independence as well as Governor of Connecticut, while 
his grandson, Oliver Wolcott, succeeded Alexander Hamilton as 
Secretary of the Treasury and was also Governor of Connecticut. 
Other descendants are Governor Robert Wolcott of Massachu- 
setts and the Wads worth family of Geneseo, N. Y., and in Wol- 
cott Keep of Lockport, N. Y., the Wolcott blood is united with 
that of Captain Abbey of Enfield. 

ERECTION OF THE TOWN HALL. 

The third meeting house was built by Isaac Kibbe, 1731- 
1779. He was the only son of Isaac Kibbe, 1683-1766, who was 
the first boy born in Enfield and the youngest brother of Rachel 
Kibbe, who left the record of the "frolick" at the raising of the 
previous church in 1706. Mr. Kibbe executed a bond that the 
new church should be "of the same dimensions and in every 
respect equal in size, quality and goodness to the meeting house 
in East Windsor." That building has been burned since, but its 
dimensions, 60 by 45 feet and 27 feet high, are preserved in the 
copy, except that the pillared porch was added in 1848, when 
the church was moved off the Enfield Green and converted into 
the present town hall. 

It was completed according to contract on January 1, 1775. 
and at the Lexington Alarm in the following April became the 
scene of Captain Abbey's drum-beating exploit. At the meeting 
of the First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield, on January 16, 1775, 
it was voted to pay to Isaac Kibbe sixty pounds extra above his 
contract and also the old meeting house, for the reason that he 
had built the new church "better than bargain." It is interesting 
to note that Mr. Kibbe's contract was for £1,100, and that it 
was paid in beef, pork, grain and tobacco. In this payment in 
kind wheat was rated at 4 shillings (one dollar) per bushel, rye 
at 3 shillings (75 cents), Indian corn at 2 shillings (50 cents), 

29 



beef at 2 pence (4 cents), pork at 3 pence (6 cents), and tobacco 
at 18 shillings ($4.50) per hundred pounds if raised by the hand 
that presented it for his rate or on his own land. In case of 
delay in payments the sums due were to be at interest till paid, 
and money was always to be accepted instead of the produce 
named if any person desired. The figures show that in 150 years 
grain has not advanced in price, while meat costs several times 
as much to-day. These payments in kind for the building of the 
meeting house furnish a good picture of the simple agricultural 
life of our forefathers. What a mistake for the immigrants of 
to-day to herd in great cities instead of going into the country 
and cultivating the soil like the early settlers. 

AMERICANIZE THE IMMIGRANT, SAYS 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

[Address before the National Americanization Committee, 
February 1, 1916.] 

Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn 
English, but that he has got to learn it. Let the immigrant who 
does not learn it go back. He has got to consider the interest 
of the United States or he should not stay here. He must be 
made to see that his opportunities in this country depend upon 
his knowing English and observing American standards. The 
employer cannot be permitted to regard him only as an industrial 
asset. 

We must in every way possible encourage the immigrant to 
rise, help him up, give him a chance to help himself. If we try 
to carry him he may well prove not worth carrying. We must 
in turn insist upon his showing the same standard of fealty to 
this country and to join with us in raising the level of our com- 
mon American citizenship. 

If I could I would have the kind of restriction which would 
not allow any immigrant to come here unless I was content that 
his grandchildren would be fellow-citizens of my grandchildren. 
They will not be so if he lives in a boarding house at $2.50 per 
month with ten other boarders and contracts tuberculosis and 
contributes to the next generation a body of citizens inferior not 
only morally and spiritually but also physically. 



30 



AMERICA'S DUTY TO THE FOREIGNER. 

| Speech of Charles E. Hughes at Detroit, August 7, 1916.] 

You have here the problem of the sudden introduction of a 
large alien population. You did not remain indifferent. You 
set an example in Americanization to all America ; and we point 
to Detroit as the one place in this land where there has been 
shown a quickening of interest in the development, training and 
Americanizing of alien men and women who have come to this 
land. 

It is perfectly idle to expect a sound sentiment of American 
unity if those who come among us as strangers come merely to be 
exploited. When we admit men and women to this country 
we assume obligations with respect to their training, as well as 
granting privileges, and we have to be awake to these obligations, 
and to realize that in every community there must be a well 
organized effort to make America supreme in the thought of 
every one who comes into the community ; to have the language 
understood and spoken ; to have American sentiment replace 
foreign sentiment ; to have American ideals replace foreign ideals ; 
to have a realization that this is a country not simply giving an 
opportunity to work for dollars but a country that is devoted to 
the betterment of human life, to the liberalization of all those 
things connected with human understanding and purpose. We 
want America first in the mind and heart of every one in this 
land. 

But America is not simply a land for the man of special 
talent, or of distinguished aptitude. This is the home of the 
average man. The ordinary man, the man who is doing his best 
whatever his talent or aptitude. And in our large industrial 
occupations, where thousands are gathered together in one ser- 
vice, we want a recognition of human brotherhood in providing 
for the welfare of those who make the wealth of this great 
country. 

We want workingmen to be safeguarded from every injury 
that can be prevented. We want the health of the workingmen 
looked after ; every means provided which conducts to the proper 
standpoint of living; every means provided for proper recreation; 
appropriate means for education, for vocational training. In 
short, the workingman who is in his job and expects to continue 

31 



in that job ought to feel that he is doing something worth while 
for a community that appreciates it and gives him a fair chance 
to lead a happy and decent life. 

LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG, 1863 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedi 
cated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we 
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, 01 
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Wf 
are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate 
a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave 
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and 
proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot 
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground 
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse 
crated it far above our power to add or detract. The world wil 1 
little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never 
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedi 
cated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far nobly 
carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us ; that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last 
full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that the 
dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God. 
have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



32 



Nothing is more wholesome than for a people to be reminded 
of a noble ancestry and of their illustrious deeds. — George Will- 
iam Curtis, April, 1875. 



The Story of a Town Told in the 
History of a Family 



Our country is the history of our fathers — our country is 
the tradition of our mothers — our country is past renown — our 
country is present pride and power — our country is future hope 
and destiny — our country is greatness, glory, truth, constitutional 
liberty — above all, freedom forever ! 

U. S. Senator Edzvard D. Baker, in Union Square, New 
York, April 20, 1861, six days after the evacuation of Fort 
Sumter. He raised the "California" regiment in New York and 
Philadelphia and died at the head of his brigade at Ball's Bluff, 
October 21, 1861. 

33 




: : ' 


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V -. .'. tj - 1 




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ISfc 








) >;. 




A 



THE IMMIGRANT 
ANCESTOR 
AND THE 

WINDHAM ABBES 



¥ 



JOHN ABBEY, 16124690 

SAILED FROM LONDON, ENGLAND, IN THE "BON- 
A VENTURE" JANUARY 2, 1634. EARLY SETTLER OF 
WENH VM, MASSACHUSETTS. SONS JOHN AND 
SAMUEL SETTLED IN WINDHAM, CONNECTICUT, 
1696-7. THE WINDHAM ABBES INCLUDE RICHARD, 
1682-1737, LEGISLATOR; JOSHUA, 1710-1807, PHILAN- 
THROPIST; SHUBAEL, 1744-1804, LEGISLATOR; HENRY 
ABBEY, 1842-1911, POET; EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY, 
1852-1911, PAINTER; AND THE BROTHERS ROBERT 
ABBE, 1850, SURGEON, AND CLEVELAND ABBE, 1838, 
ASTRONOMER AND METEOROLOGIST. 



SEALS AND 

INSCRIPTION ON 

FIRST HALF OF 

NORTHEAST SEAT 




34 



CAPTAIN ABBEY'S 
GRANDFATHER 




THOMAS ABBEY, 16564 728 

SOLDIER IN KING PHILIP'S WAR IN CAPTAIN 
APPLETON'S COMPANY. WOUNDED AT THE TAKING 
OF THE INDIAN FORT IN THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT 
AT NARRAGANSETT, RHODE ISLAND, DECEMBER 19, 
1675. ONE OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF ENFIELD, 
1683. MARRIED DECEMBER 17, 1683, SARAH FAIRFIELD, 
DAUGHTER OF WALTER FAIRFIELD, REPRESENTA- 
TIVE OF WEN HAM IN THE GENERAL COURT OF 
MASSACHUSETS. 1689. GRANDDAUGHTER OF JOHN 
FAIRFIELD, AN ORIGINAL PROPRIETOR OF WEN- 
HAM. 




SEALS AND 

INSCRIPTION ON 

SECOND HALF OF 

NORTHEAST SEAT 



CAPTAIN ABBEY'S 
FATHER 




LIEUTENANT THOMAS ABBEY, 16864 759 

SERGEANT, 1711. LIEUTENANT, 1712-13. MAR- 
RIED MARCH 13, 1/15, MARY PEASE, DAUGHTER OF 
CAPTAIN JOHN PEASE, FOUNDER OF ENFIELD, 
FATHER OF FIRST CHILD BORN HERE, 1683. SHE 
WAS GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER OF ROBERT PEASE 
OF THE "FRANCIS," 1634; ROBERT GOODELL OF THE 
"ELIZABETH," 1634; JOHN ADAMS OF THE "FOR- 
TUNE," 1621, AND OF WILLIAM VASSALL OF THE 
"ARABELLA," 1630, WHOSE FATHER, JOHN VASSALL, 
WAS COMMANDER OF TWO SHIPS AGAINST THE 
SPANISH ARMADA, 1588, AND MEMBER OF THE VIR- 
GINIA COMPANY WHICH FOUNDED JAMESTOWN, 
1607. 




SEALS AND 

INSCRIPTION ON 

FIRST HALF OF 

SOUTHEAST SEAT 




CAPTAIN ABBEY'S 
WIFE 



CAPTAIN THOMAS ABBEY. 17314811 

MARRIED JUNE 22, 1749, PENELOPE TERRY, 
DAUGHTER OF DR. EBENEZER TERRY, EARLIEST 
NATIVE PHYSICIAN OF THIS TOWN. GRANDDAUGH- 
TER OF CAPTAIN SAMUEL TERRY, PIONEER SET- 
TLER, WHOSE FATHER, SERGEANT SAMUEL TERRY, 
CAME FROM BARNET, ENGLAND, AS APPRENTICE 
TO WILLIAM PYNCHON, FOUNDER OF SPRINGFIELD. 
THE FIRST MARRIAGE IN ENFIELD WAS THAT OF 
CAPTAIN SAMUEL TERRY, MAY 17, 1682, TO HANNAH 
MORGAN, DAUGHTER OF CAPTAIN MILES MORGAN, 
DEFENDER OF SPRINGFIELD AGAINST THE INDIANS, 
OCTOBER 5. 1675. 



SEALS AND 

INSCRIPTION ON 

SECOND HALF OF 

SOUTHEAST SEAT 




37 









v • 






vm 


f'fpf^ 




m ** 


j\ ' 


f 


Jm it. 







CAPTAIN 
ABBEY'S 

SON 



PETER ABBEY, 

MARRIED JUNE 22, 17! 



17694 857 

9, HANNAH ALDEN, 
DAUGHTER OF COLONEL AMOS ALDEN. SHE WAS A 
DESCENDANT OF JOHN ALDEN, OF THE "MAYFLOW- 
ER," 1620; JOHN BUSH OF THE "ALEXANDER," 1634; 
EDWARD KIBBE OF BOSTON, 1645, AND OF WILLIAM 
HARVEY, ENGLISH ENVOY DURING FOUR TUDOR 
REIGNS TO EMPEROR CHARLES V., DENMARK, SAX- 
ONY AND FRANCE, AND SENT TO DECLARE WAR 
AGAINST FRANCE, JUNE 7, 1557. 



SEAL AND 

INSCRIPTION ON 

FIRST SECTION OF 

SOUTHWEST SEAT 




CAPTAIN 

ABBEY'S 

GRANDSON 




LIEUT. SETH ALDEN ABBEY, U.S.A. 1798-1880 

MARRIED FEBRUARY 8, 1821, MERCY HUNT. 
PRINTER, EDITOR, CONSTABLE, MARSHAL, SHERIFF 

' AND MUNICIPAL JUDGE OF CLEVELAND, OHIO. EN- 
LISTED 1861, AT AGE OF 63. FIRST LIEUTENANT 

i SECOND OHIO CAVALRY. SERVED THREE YEARS IN 
THE CIVIL WAR. 




SEAL AND 
INSCRIPTION ON 

THE MIDDLE 

SECTION OF THE 

SOUTHWEST SEAT 



SETH ALDEN ABBEY, 1798-1880 

Judge Abbey left a manuscript, dated June 15, 1872, in which 
he gives his recollections of his grandfather, Captain Abbey, as 
follows : 

"When a small boy I was frequently at his house for a week 
at a time, and have heard him tell many a thrilling tale of his 
hairbreadth escapes, hardships, sufferings, etc., in service against 
the French and Indians. At the breaking out of the Revolution 
a volunteer company was raised in his neighborhood, and he was 
elected their captain. I have heard him say, frequently, that ht 
had chances of promotion, often, but his men would not consent 
to his leaving them. I saw many of his old soldiers who served 
during the war; and the neighbors were as particular when ad- 
dressing any of them, in giving them their title, as Corporal such 
a one or Sergeant such a one, as they would be in addressing a 
general. Thomas Abbey died in 1811, and was as anxious for a 
fight again with old England, which was then much talked of, 
just before his death, as in his younger days." 

When, during the Civil War, Judge Abbey was offered pro- 
motion by David Tod, the war Governor of Ohio, like his grand- 
father, he declined, characteristically remarking to his friends 
that he thought he was doing more effective work where then 
situated. 



40 



CAPTAIN ABBEY'S ELDEST GRANDSON 
COLONEL DORREPHUS ABBEY, 1792-1838 

(SETH ALDEN ABBEY'S BROTHER' 

BORN IN SUFFIELD, CONNECTICUT, JULY 13, 1792. 
PRINTER AND EDITOR, WATERTOWN, NEW YORK. 
LED AN EXPEDITION INTO CANADA IN THE PA- 
TRIOT WAR, 1838. AT THE BATTLE OF PRESCOTT, 
NOVEMBER 13-16, WITH COLONEL VON SHOULTZ 
AND 180 MEN, HELD THE STONE WINDMILL FOR 
FOUR DAYS AGAINST TWO REGIMENTS OF BRITISH 
REGULARS, THREE ARMED STEAMBOATS AND 900 
VOLUNTEERS. HANGED BY THE BRITISH IN FORT 
HENRY AT KINGSTON, DECEMBER 12, 1838. 




V 



> 



- <J vj *- 

Seal and Inscription on third section of Southwest Seat. 

In selecting subjects for these seals the Tower of London 
was chosen to typify the feudal power and autocratic sway of 
Charles I. and his "right divine to rule awrong," which John 
Abbey left behind him when he sailed away from the British 
capital on the second day of January, 1634. By a curious coinci 
dence, of which we were not aware when making this selection 
but which certainly confirmed its appropriateness, the flag nailed 
to the summit of the windmill is now in the Tower of London, 
among the trophies taken on many a bloody field of battle. The 
flag was presented to the leaders of the Patriot War by the ladies 
of Onondaga County, New York. It has an eagle, for Liberty, 

41 



and two stars, representing Upper and Lower Canada, wrought 
on a ground of blue, and is a beautiful specimen of woman's 
handiwork. 

"Among all these relics from every quarter of the globe none 
was secured at greater cost," says Captain Daniel D. Heustis in 
his "Narrative of Adventures and Sufferings," published in 1848. 

Colonel Von Shoultz, who was a Polish nobleman already 
distinguished for military ability in the revolution against Russia 
in his native land, Colonel Abbey and the nine other Americans 
who were hanged at Kingston, were probably fortunate to die 
when and as they did, in view of the long-drawn-out misery of the 
survivors of the court martial. Of the 182 men who defended 
the windmill, 17 were killed in the fight, 3 died later of their 
wounds, 5 escaped before the surrender, 11 as stated were 
hanged, 64 were pardoned after trial, 22 were discharged without 
trial, and 60 were transported to Van Diemen's Land (now Tas- 
mania), together with 18 other prisoners taken at the battle 
fought at Windsor, opposite Detroit. Captain Heustis says these 
unfortunates were 140 days on the convict ship "Buffalo," and 
that their sufferings were such that they planned a mutiny, which, 
being discovered, their last state, confined between decks in the 
tropics, was worse than the first. The wretched survivors, on 
arrival in the penal settlement, were put to work on the roads 
for two years and then became ticket-of-leave men. On January 
1, 1845, after six years of misery, Captain Heustis received his 
pardon. 

Of Dorrephus Abbey's last days Captain Heustis writes as 
follows : "I had been in the room with Colonel Abbey. Three 
or four days before his murder, the sheriff came in and told him 
he had received orders for his execution, and wished him to get 
ready to remove to the cell of the condemned immediately. He 
received the intelligence with manly coolness, and, on leaving, 
shook hands with us all, bidding us farewell." On the evening 
previous to his death he wrote affectionate letters to his three 
orphan children. To one of these letters a postscript was added 
the next morning as follows : 

"I slept soundly and quietly last night ; I now feel as though 
I could meet the event with composure." 

He was the second of the prisoners to be hanged, Colonel 
Von Shoultz being the first victim on December 8. 

Nicholas Augustus Sultuskie Von Shoultz, the elected chief 
of the invading party, was a good military engineer, deeply versed 
in the sciences, spoke eight languages, had acquired high literary 

42 



honors, and was widely travelled. His father, who, with another 
son, fell before the walls of Warsaw, held an interest in the cele- 
brated mines of Cracow, where the hero of the Battle of the 
Windmill acquired intimate knowledge of the manufacturing of 
salt. In the fall of 1836 he set up a laboratory in Onondaga 
County, at Salina, where he became engaged to a beautiful and 
accomplished American girl, undoubtedly one of the ladies who 
embroidered the flag now in the Tower of London. Her minia- 
ture was torn from her lover's neck at the time of his capture, 
when all of the prisoners were most brutally treated, being robbed 
of their money, watches and even clothing, leaving some of them 
half-naked in bitter winter weather. A few days before Von 
Shoultz's death he wrote a beautiful song, "The Maiden's An- 
swer," which, relates Captain Heustis, he sang to his companions 
in a thrilling yet plaintive voice. 

When I visited Fort Henry some years ago I was shown a 
carving of a sloop on the stone wall of the cell of the condemned 
in which Colonel Abbey and Colonel Von Shoultz were confined, 
and was told that it was made by these intrepid men. Under 
more favorable circumstances the Polish champion of freedom 
would have been regarded as the Kosciusko of Canada and 
Colonel Abbey as the hero of Prescott Windmill, just as his 
grandfather is looked upon as the hero of Enfield meeting house. 

The battle of Prescott was the most severe engagement of 
the Patriot War. and cost the loyalists 130 men in killed and 
wounded. A serious fight took place three weeks later at Windsor, 
in which the battle-cry was. "Remember Prescott.''* on account 
of the cruelties practiced by the loyalist volunteers on the pris- 
oners who surrendered at the windmill, whose lives were saved 
only by the intervention of the better disciplined and perhaps 
more chivalrous British regulars. On December 13, 1837. Rens- 
selaer van Rensselaer and 24 patriot volunteers seized Navy 
Island, above Niagara Falls, opposite Chippawa. They were 
joined by William Lyon Mackenzie, the political chief of the 
movement in Upper Canada, and set up a provisional govern- 
ment. Volunteers flocked to their standard and they held the 
island for a month, during which the American steamer "Caro- 
line" was captured by the British, set on fire and sent over Niagara 
Falls ablaze. When the revolutionists evacuated Navy Island on 
January 13. 1838. their numbers had increased to about 600. 
Louis Joseph Papineau was the leader in Lower Canada. As 
Captain Heustis describes only his own experiences, any one 
desirous of a complete and impartial account of the Patriot War 

43 



should read Charles Lindsey 's "Life and Times of William Lyon 
Mackenzie and the Rebellion of 1837-8." 

While from a military standpoint decidedly a "Lost Cause," 
Lindsey declares that "Much of the liberty Canada has enjoyed 
since 1840, and more of the wonderful progress she has made, 
are due to the changes which the insurrection was the chief 
agent in producing." His testimony is the more convincing 
because he deplores the movement as "an enterprise which can- 
not be justified." In his introduction Lindsey further states that 
it "was in the end advantageous to the country." The insurrec- 
tion resulted in very speedily establishing responsible constitu- 
tional government in Canada ; in fact, it secured "Home Rule" 
for our neighbors on the north. 




OLD WINDMILL 

NEAR PRESCOTT 

CONVERTED 

INTO A 

LIGHTHOUSE BY 

THE CANADIAN 

GOVERNMENT 



Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but 
victories. Bunker Hill, soldiers call a defeat. But Liberty dates 
from it, though Warren lay dead on the Held. — Wendell Phillips, 
1859. 

Every great crisis in human history is a pass of Thermopylae, 
and there is always a Leonidas and his 300 to die in it, if they 
cannot conquer. And so long as Liberty has one martyr, so long 
as one drop of blood is poured out for her, so long from that 
single drop of bloody sweat of the agony of mankind shall spring 
hosts as countless as the forest leaves and as mighty as the 
sea. — George William Curtis, "The Call of Freedom." 



44 




CAPTAIN 

ABBEY'S 

GREAT 

GRANDSON 



HENRY GILBERT ABBEY, 182M887 

CALIFORNIA, 1849. MARRIED SEPTEMBER 28, 
1859, AMELIA MATHILDA JOHNSTONE. AS SOLE 
TRUSTEE ESTABLISHED IN THE WESTERN RESERVE 
AT CLEVELAND, OHIO, THE CASE SCHOOL OF 
APPLIED SCIENCE, 1880. 



SEAL AND 
INSCRIPTION 

ON FIRST 

SECTION OF 

NORTHWEST SEAT 




f ^ 






\ 



i X 



\ 



45 



A RARE FRIENDSHIP 

Leonard Case, the founder of the Case School, had a strong 
dislike for business. On the death of his father in 1866, when 
he came into possession of the Case estate, he made his life-long 
friend, Henry G. Abbey, general manager and confidential agent 
of the property. He was thus enabled, until his death in 1880, 
to devote himself to his literary and mathematical studies. The 
story of this beautiful friendship was well told by Judge James 
D. Cleveland, president of the board of trustees, in his address 
at the Case School commencement in 1891 : 

"Mr. Abbey relieved Mr. Case of all business cares and was 
most eminently qualified for the duties which he had been called 
to undertake. He had lived in Cleveland from his infancy, and 
united great strength of mind to a thorough study of the law, 
long experience in business, knowledge of the world and a culti- 
vated taste in literature. He had been a practicing lawyer in 
Milwaukee, clerk of the Wisconsin House of Representatives ; a 
pioneer for gold in 1849 in California ; he had rocked the cradle 
on the sands of the Sacramento and Klamath rivers, and had 
brought back to Cleveland the net results — some gold and a full 
stock of experience. He had settled down to sober hard work 
in his profession, had been much trusted as a master commis- 
sioner, referee and administrator of estates, and was a thoroughly 
equipped and able coadjutor of the projects and purposes of Mr. 
Case in relation to the property and all other matters requiring 
counsel, labor and management. 

"The estate was not only of such volume and varied quality, 
composed as it was of city and farms lands, blocks of buildings 
in process of construction and under rental, situated near and 
remote from the center of activity, that they involved negotiations 
and complications with all municipal and financial corporations ; 
indeed, with all sorts of men — capitalists, merchants, mechanics, 
laborers, farmers and gardeners. The business required a very 
high order of administrative qualities, and put the abilities of the 
confidential agent and manager to the highest tension. In these 
relations Mr. Abbey was so well equipped as to bring to Mr. 
Case the perfect relief and exemption from care and vexation 
about his business that he aimed at. and gave him opportunity 
for study and the pursuits that made life tolerable. 

"Mr; Case's struggle with broken health was also partici- 
pated in by Mr. Abbey, who was always at his side with his 

46 



cheering conversational powers. He accompanied him usually 
on his excursions, and stood like a tower of strength between 
him and the aggressive and persistent pressure of worldly affairs. 
None could so well have given to you the story of that secluded 
life of Leonard Case — thoughtful for those he esteemed and 
respected, and wisely considerate for those who should come after 
him — as Henry Abbey could have done. He did not do it, and 
we must conclude that what he did not write or say of this life 
was as sacred in his possession as it had been during the lifetime 
of a man of whom he spoke in these few but comprehensive 
words, 'He was the wisest and the best man that I ever knew.' ,; 




CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE, Cleveland, Ohio 

The Main Building, constructed under the supervision of Henry G. Abbey 

In 1877 and 1879 Air. Case deeded real estate to Mr. Abbey 
to be used after his death in the establishment of the Case School. 
This trust was carried out with great efficiency. The year follow- 
ing Air. Case's death instruction was begun in his old home 
facing the public square, and in 1885 the school was removed to 
a new building on the present site. Unfortunately, when only 
half completed, this building was totally destroyed by fire, and 
Air. Abbey had to begin his work all over again. He did not 
live to see the new main building fully completed. It is now only 
one of seven buildings on the 25-acre campus, amply maintained 
by the income of the real estate deeded for the purpose. 



47 



Leonard Case's grandfather, Meshach Case, settled with 
his family in the Western Reserve in 1800, when there were not 
fifty people, beside themselves on the whole domain of the Con- 
necticut Land Company. Meshach Case was of Dutch descent, 
and his wife the daughter of Leonard Eckstein, a German, who 
fled to America from religious persecution in Nuremburg, where 
he was imprisoned for his opinions. He was confined in a tower 
80 feet high. His sister brought him a cake in which she had 
baked a slender silk cord. This he let down at night and escaped 
down the rope which his friends attached to it. To his grand- 
children in America he showed his hands, still scarred from the 
blisters made by the rope. 

Owing to the serious illness of Meshach Case the care of 
his family of eight children fell upon the shoulders of his eldest 
son, Leonard Case, Senior, at the age of fourteen. Space does not 
permit to tell of the varied activities of this city maker ; it must 
suffice to say that when 21 he became confidential clerk of the 
agent of the Connecticut Land Company, and twenty years later 
was made agent of the company, which post he held for twenty- 
eight years. No man had more to do with the development of 
Cleveland, and he was the authority on land titles in the Western 
Reserve. 

William Case, elder son of Leonard Case, Senior, was a 
great hunter, and with a coterie of naturalists made a collection 
of a thousand birds and beasts which they killed, stuffed and 
mounted. These they housed in a building known as "The Ark," 
which stood on the site of the present Cleveland post office, close 
to the public square. No birds or animals in Ohio or Michigan 
were unknown to these men, who were called the "Arkites," and 
John J. Audubon acknowledged his indebtedness to them. William 
Case had a facility for drawing and painting in water colors that 
enabled him to convey to the great naturalist the colors and forms 
of newly discovered birds and other specimens of natural history. 
He died in 1862, leaving uncompleted a fine building, which 
included a music hall, library and a new home for "The Ark." 
His father and brother completed this building, which stood on 
the site now included in the enlarged post office. 

This Case Library was the most delightful library I ever 
had access to. The fee was nominal, one dollar a year, and the 
approach to its treasures unrestricted. One wasted no time 

48 



making" out slips and waiting for books. All were ready to your 
hand, and I never heard of even the most valuable books being- 
stolen. The Audubon volumes always lay on a great table in 
front of the librarian's desk. In the new "Ark," housed in Room 
19 in Case Hall, Leonard Case, Junior, spent many happy hours 
in the congenial society of "The Arkites," a select group of 
cultured men, leaders of the intellectual life of Cleveland. As 
the chief city of the Western Reserve, Cleveland derived its char- 
acter from New England and mainly from Connecticut. Its 
first settlers, and a large portion of those who came later, were 
people of education and intelligence. The institutions they built 
up are of the same social and literary tendency as those of the 
mother colony, and no small taste has been cultivated for science, 
especially those branches of a practical character. 

Judge Cleveland, from whose biographical address on the 
founder of Case School I have gathered most of these partic- 
ulars, was born in Connecticut, and was related to President 
Cleveland and to General Moses Cleveland, of Canterbury, Con- 
necticut, who in 1796 located the city of Cleveland. This was 
while he was engaged in blocking into townships the Western 
Reserve of Connecticut, which extended for over 100 miles along 
the Ohio shore of Lake Erie, westward from the boundaries of 
Pennsylvania. Cleveland was named in honor of General 
Cleveland. 



V) 



ANOTHER GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN ABBEY 

EDWIN ALDEN ABBEY, 1823^1893 

DISPATCH RIDER IN THE MEXICAN WAR. 
CROSSED THE PLAINS WITH KIT CARSON. A PIO- 
NEER SETTLER OF OREGON, 1851. 




SEAL AND INSCRIPTION IN FIRST HALF OF SECOND 
SECTION OF NORTHWEST SEAT. 



so 




EDWIN ALDEN ABBEY, 1823-1893 
(Henry Gilbert Abbey's Brother) 

In 1889, after an absence of 45 years, Air. Abbey returned 
to the East to see his relatives. Straight, vigorous and muscular, 
he did not look his sixty-six years. We had heard of his daring 
in the Mexican War and questioned him about his life as a scout. 
He thrilled us by his stories of night rides, when he was fre- 
quently fired at, and he told how his horse would shy at the dead 
bodies lying along the roadside. He was known in the West as 
Kit Abbey, on account of his association with Kit Carson. 



51 



CAPTAIN 

ABBEY'S 

GREAT^GREAT 

GRANDSON 




:, h. 



i 



HENRY ABBEY, 1862 

MECHANICAL ENGINEER, STEVENS INSTITUTE 
OF TECHNOLOGY, 1885. MARRIED SEPTEMBER, 1886, 
REBECCA CONNELLY. SINCE 1906 IN MEXICO CITY 
DURING ALL DISTURBANCES THERE. 



SEAL AND 

INSCRIPTION 

IN SECOND 

HALF OF SECOND 

SECTION OF 
NORTHWEST SEAT 




CAPTAIN 

ABBEY'S 

GREAT^GREAT. 

GREATS 

GRANDSON 



LIEUT. HENRY ABBEY, Jr., U. S. A., 1887 

MARRIED MAY 5, 1914, LUCRETIA MILLER, 
DAUGHTER OF MAJOR CHARLES MILLER. U. S. A. 
COMMANDED ADVANCE GUARD TENTH CAVALRY 
IN MEXICO. SUSTAINED FIRST VILLA ATTACK AT 
AGUASCALIENTES, APRIL 1, 1916, AND WITH 30 MEN 
ROUTED 150 MEXICANS. 



SEAL AND 
INSCRIPTION 

IN THIRD 

SECTION OF 

NORTHWEST SEAT 




5 3 



NEGRO TROOPERS* VICTORY 

How Thirty of Them Put to Flight 150 Bandits April 1 

Pershing's Camp at Front, Mexico, April 7, by courier to 
Columbus, New Mexico, April 14. — About thirty men of the 
Tenth Cavalry, negroes, who were in the fight with Villa bandits 
April 1 at Aguascalientes, arrived here to-day for rest and re- 
outfitting. The men were sure they had killed more than the 
three dead covered in the official report. Three times the Villa 
forces, numbering about 150, attempted to ambush the advance 
guards of the Tenth. Not more than three troops of the Tenth 
participated in the fight, which lasted an hour and a half. 

The Tenth was riding for Guerrero when they approached 
the town of Aguascalientes. Nearing the top of a rise, the 
advance guard was, without warning, subjected to volley fire, 
coming simultaneously from both sides of the road. The Villa 
men shooting at them were behind hills on either side. Troop E 
of the Tenth was brought up at a trot, while Troop F went around 
to flank the Villa bandits and drive them out of the hill. Troop 
H was hurried forward. As E Troop rounded the hill at a gallop 
it came within a minute's ride of the Villa forces on that side. 
Some of the cavalrymen got so close that they used their pistols. 
The moment the E Troop appeared the Villa bandits rode for 
the side of a mountain overlooking the town. 

"It was the steepest mountainside we have seen anybody 
climbing,'' said one of the men today, "and they knew the trails 
while we did not, but we went up after them. We went up on 
our horses until they made a stand from behind rocks. The bullets 
were whistling all around us, but they never hit one of us. They v 
had a machine gun in action, too. We dismounted and returned 
the fire. Then they ran farther up the mountain, with us after 
them, until they made another stand. We opened fire on them 
again, but they would not stand. At last they got away in the 
steep trails which they knew, while we climbed rocks and fallen 
tree trunks and fell behind." 

The squadron in the Aguascalientes fight was commanded by 
Colonel William C. Brown. Major Charles Young led the imme- 
diate chase of the bandits. Lieutenant Henry Abbey, Jr., com- 
manded the advance guard, which took the first Villa fire. 
Lieutenant John Kennard commanded E Troop in the chase. — 
New York Evening Post, April 14, 19 16. 

54 



The colored cavalrymen of the Tenth Regiment have won 
the name of "Hell on Horseback." They are absolutely fearless 
and wonderfully well disciplined. 

"When a country is at war there can be but two parties — 
one for its life, the other for its death." — The zvovds of Cassius 
M. Clay, when in 1846 lie volunteered for service in the zvar 
against Mexico, of which he disapproved and had strenuously 
opposed. 

THE PRICE OF LIBERTY. 
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier 
and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service 
of his country ; but he that stands it now deserves the love and 
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily con- 
quered ; yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the 
conflict the more glorious the triumph ; what we obtain too cheap 
we esteem too lightly ; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its 
value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods ; 
and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom 
should not be highly rated. — From "The Crisis," Thomas Paine, 
December 23, ijj6. 

WHAT IS OUR COUNTRY? 
Not alone the land and the sea, the lakes and rivers, and 
valleys and mountains — not alone the people, their customs and 
laws — not alone the memories of the past, the hopes of the 
future. It is something more than all these combined. It is a 
divine abstraction. You cannot tell what it is, but let its flag 
rustle above your head — you feel its living presence in your 
hearts. They tell us that our country must die ; that the sun and 
stars will look upon the great Republic no more ; that already the 
black eagles of despotism are gathering in our political sky ; that 
even now king and emperors are casting lots for the garments 
of our national glory. It shall not be. — Newton Booth, eleventh 
Governor of California and United States Senator. 

NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 
If there ever was a time, this is the hour for Americans 
to rouse themselves and exert every ability. Their all is at hazard 
and the die of fate spins doubtful ! In vain do we trace magna- 
nimity and heroism ; in vain do we trace a descent from the 
worthies of the earth, if we inherit not the spirit of our ancestors. 
— Josiah Q.uincy, October 3, 1768. 

55 



OLD MORTALITY 

As I approached this deserted mansion of the dead, the chink 
of a hammer was distinctly heard. I saw Old Mortality engaged 
in his daily task of cleaning and repairing the ornaments and 
epitaphs upon the tomb. The old man was seated upon the monu- 
ment and busily employed in deepening with his chisel the letters 
of the inscription. 

During a period of nearly thirty years the pious enthusiast 
wandered about, but regulated his circuit so as annually to visit 
the graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered by the 
sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last 
monarchs of the Stuart line. Their tombs are often apart from 
human habitation, in the remote moors and wilds to which the 
wanderers had fled for concealment. But wherever they existed, 
Old Mortality was sure to visit them when his annual round 
brought them within his reach, cleaning the moss from the gray 
stones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscriptions, and 
repairing the emblems of death with which these simple monu- 
ments are usually adorned. 

Motives of the most sincere devotion induced the old man 
to dedicate so many years of existence to perform this tribute 
to the memory of the deceased warriors of the church. He 
considered himself, as fulfilling a sacred duty, while renewing to 
the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and suffer- 
ings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the 
beacon-light, which was to warn future generations to defend 
their religion even unto blood. To talk of the exploits of the 
Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was 
the business, of his life. 

— Prom "Old Mortality," bv Sir Walter Scott. 



56 



FACSIMILE OF 
AUTOGRAPH 
OF CAPTAIN 

THOMAS ABBEY 




Explanation of the Inscriptions and 
Seals on the Seats 

The inscriptions enumerate the immediate ancestors and de- 
scendants of Captain Abbey, from the first immigrant of the name 
down to the present day, nine generations in all. Also included 
are the names of the best known members of the family who 
settled in Windham, Connecticut. On the seats behind the statue 
are inscriptions which describe the forebears of Captain Abbey ; 
while the statue faces inscriptions telling of the lives of five 
generations of his descendants down to the year 1916. 

THE SPELLING OF THE NAME ABBEY. 
Most of the Windham Abbes cling to the old spelling of the 
name, which also prevails in Enfield today. Captain Abbey him- 
self spelled his name with the "y," as is proven by his autograph 
reproduced here from page 148 of the second volume of Trum- 
bull's "History of Hartford County, Conn." His sons, Thomas, 
Peter and Simeon (grandfather of Westminster Abbey of New 
York), in the announcement of the dissolution of their partnership 
printed in the Hartford "Courant" of June 17, 1793, spelled the 
name Abbey. The obituary notice of Captain Abbey's widow in 
the "Courant" of January 18, 1818, also spells the name Abbey. 
The line which is recorded in this memorial has spelled the name 
Abbey for six generations consecutively, which seems to justify 
the spelling on the memorial. 

"THE GENEALOGY OF THE ABBE FAMILY." 
All of the Abbe or Abbey name or descent are in the debt 
of that member of the family who has most distinguished the name 
in the field of science. I refer to the eminent astronomer and 
meteorologist, Professor Cleveland Abbe, so widely known as 
"Old Probabilities." Throughout his long and busy life he has 
made more extensive researches into the history of the family 
than any other member. With the able assistance of Josephine 
Genung Nichols (Mrs. L Nelson Nichols, of 1915 D.ilv Ave . The 
Bronx, New York City), these labors are about to bear fruit 
in the publication of "The Genealogy of the Abbe Family." 

William L. Weaver, editor of the Willimantic "Journal," in 
his genealogical "History of Ancient Windham, Ct.," published 
in 1864, records that Mr. Abbe was at that time connected with 
the U. S. Coast Survey and acknowledges his assistance in these 

58 



words : "We are under many obligations to Mr. Cleveland Abbe 
for facts and records respecting the Abbes. He very generously 
paid the expense of a thorough search of the early records of 
Salem and Wenham, and all the descendants of John Abbe, Sen., 
of Wenham, are under lasting obligations to him for his contri- 
butions to their genealogy." 

It would take a larger volume than this to properly record 
the incalculably great services to our country and the world which 
Professor Abbe has rendered since those words were written 
fifty-two years ago. The success of his pioneer work in storm 
warnings at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1869, led to the establishment 
of the U. S. Weather Bureau in 1870. In 1871 he took the 
initiative in establishing ocean meteorology and the display of 
cautionary signals, and in 1872 the prediction of floods in rivers. 
In 1879 he began the agitation for standard time, which in five 
years gave to America, and later to the world, the standard hour 
meridians now used. In 1882 he inaugurated civil service exam- 
inations in meteorology, and in 1884 took the first step in the 
formation of the American Society of Electrical Engineers. He 
initiated special observations in rainfall, electricity, earthquakes, 
the use of balloons in meteorological observations and co-operation 
in international polar explorations, to mention only a few of the 
activities of this great scientist, who at the annual session of the 
National Academy of Sciences, in April, 1916, was awarded a 
medal "for distinguished public service in establishing and organ- 
izing the United States weather service." 

"Why found new colleges and universities to teach what is 
already taught elsewhere? Exploration is the order of the day. 
Give us first the means to increase knowledge, to explore nature 
and to bring out new truths. Let us perfect knowledge before 
we diffuse it among mankind." — Cleveland Abbe, August, 1880, 
before the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

FIRST CHILD BORN IN ENFIELD. 

The inscriptions record much of the early life of Enfield. 
They tell that the town was founded by Captain John Pease, 
1654-1734, and that he was the father of the first child born here 
in 1683. This was Margaret Pease, who married Josiah Colton 
and lived to be 92 years old. The first boy born in Enfield was, 
as already mentioned, Isaac Kibbe, father of the Isaac Kibbe 
who built the meeting house which is now the town hall. 

59 



FIRST NATIVE PHYSICIAN OF ENFIELD. 
Dr. Ebenezer Terry, 1696-1/80, was the first native physician 
of Enfield. He practiced for a number of years in South King- 
ston, Rhode Island, where he married Mary Helme, great-grand- 
daughter of Sergeant Christopher Helme, of Warwick, Rhode 
Island, who died in 1650. Dr. Terry returned to Enfield in 1722, 
and at one time represented the town in the General Court of 
Massachusetts. Enfield did not become a part of Connecticut 
until 1750. 

ENFIELD'S FIRST WOMAN DOCTOR. 
Dr. Terry's daughter, Penelope Terry, 1729-30-1818, as her 
father's pupil and assistant in the practice of his profession, was 
a forerunner of the women physicians of today. In her obituary, 
already referred to, the Hartford "Courant" states that she prac- 
ticed for thirty-three years and was present at the birth of 1,389 
children. She welcomed into life a whole generation of the 
inhabitants of this town, and is as worthy of commemoration for 
her good works as her husband, Captain Abbey, the subject of 
this memorial. She was the mother of eleven children, and left 
forty-five grandchildren, fifty-two great-grandchildren and two 
great-great-grandchildren. A total of 104 descendants of herself 
and Captain Abbey were living at the time of her death, January 
2, 1818. 

FIRST MARRIAGE IN ENFIELD. 
The first marriage in Enfield was that of Captain Samuel 
Terry, 1661-1730-31, to Hannah Morgan, 1656-1696-7, daughter 
of Captain Miles Morgan, defender of Springfield against the 
Indians in 1675. This marriage, celebrated on May 17, 1683, 
links Enfield to Springfield, where Captain Morgan's statue stands 
in Court House Square. 

MORGAN MEMORIAL. 

Another of Captain Morgan's descendants links Springfield 
and Enfield to Hartford, where the late John Pierpont Morgan, 
1837-1913, erected the splendid memorial to his father, Junius 
Spencer Morgan, which is the chief ornament of the city. 

Also recorded in the inscriptions is John Alden, of the 
Mayflower. The Alden family is already commemorated in 
Enfield by Alden's Corner, at the north end of Enfield street, 
just as the Allen family is commemorated at the south end by 
Allen's Corner. 

60 




STATUE OF MILES MORGAN AT SPRINGFIELD 

J. SCOTT HARTLEY. Sculptor 




MORGAN MEMORIAL GALLERY IN HARTFORD 



"Lost Causes" in American History 

Through the perspective of years one gets a more correct 
picture of events than at the time they occurred. In the passage 
of time passions cool and it is possible to see both sides of a 
conflict in a less vivid but truer light than was possible to the 
combatants themselves. It is for these reasons, as well as to 
give balance and variety to this narrative of a family, that along 
with the causes which were successful have been included those 
which failed, and these "Lost Causes" are illustrated in several 
of the seals. 



THE NEW ENGLAND INDIANS. 

For example, the portrait of King Philip commemorates a 
native American who endured the encroachments of the white 
settlers until goaded to desperation. After two centuries had 
elapsed historians perceived that this Indian chief was in realitv 
a patriot like the Belgians of today, contending for the inde- 
pendence of his country, a great ruler and, like the King of the 
Belgians, a valiant leader in war. In his summons to the 
aboriginal lords of New England, Pometacon, as the chief of the 
Wampanoags was called in the Indian tongue, put the case of 
the Indian in these words : 

"The English who came first to this country were but a 
handful of people, forlorn, poor and distressed. My father, 
Massasoit, did all in his power to serve them. Their numbers 
increased. My father's councilors were alarmed. They urged 
him to destroy the English before they became strong enough 
to give law to the Indians and take away their country. My 
father was also the father to the English. We remained their 
friend. Experience shows that his councilors were right. The 
English disarmed my people. They tried them by their laws 
and assessed damages my people could not pay. Sometimes the 
cattle of the English would come into the cornfields of my people, 
for they did not make fences like the English. I must then be 
seized and confined till I sold another tract of my country for 
damages and costs. Thus tract after tract is gone. But a small 
part of the dominion of my ancestors remains. I am determined 
not to live until I have no country." 

It was truly said that King Philip was "broad-browed and 
noble-minded." His chief aid was Canonchet, chief of the Narra- 

62 



gansetts. Those two were men of truly royal pride. When 
summoned before the English Governor King Philip replied to his 
messenger as follows : 

"Your governor is but a subject of King Charles of England. 
I shall not treat with a subject. I shall only treat with the King, 
my brother. When he comes I am ready !" 

Is not this the same royal spirit that Shakespeare shows us 
in Queen Katherine when in the trial scene in "King Henry VIII." 
she says to Cardinal Wolsey : 

"I do refuse you for my judge ; and here, 
Before you all, appeal unto the Pope !" 

Miles Morgan gallantly defended Springfield against the on- 
slaught of King Philip on October 5, 1675, and the first Thomas 
Abbey was wounded in the great fight in the Narragansett swamp 
on December 19 of the same year. The capture of this fort, 
where the Indians made their last stand, finally destroyed their 
power in New England. 

The American Indian has indelibly stamped himself upon the 
American continent by the picturesque names which he gave to 
lakes, rivers and mountains all over our broad land, and which 
also survive in the names of States and cities and counties. This 
thought is particularly well expressed in the following stanzas by 
Lydia Huntley Sigourney : 

Indian Names. 
Ye say they all have passed away, 

That noble race and brave ; 
That their light canoes have vanished 

From off the crested wave ; 
That mid the forests where they roamed 

There rings no hunter's shout ; 
But their name is on your waters, 

Ye may not wash it out. 

'Tis where Ontario's billow 

Like ocean's surge is curl'd, 
Where strong Niagara's thunders wake 

The echo of the world, 
Where red Missouri bringeth 

Rich tribute from the west, 
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps 

On green Virginia's breast. 

63 



Ye say their conelike cabins 

That clustered o'er the vale 
Have disappeared, as wither'd leaves 

Before the autumn's gale; 
But their memory liveth on your hills, 

Their baptism on your shore ; 
Your everlasting rivers speak 

Their dialect of yore. 

Old Massachusetts wears it 

Within her lordly crown, 
And broad Ohio bears it 

Amid his young renown. 
Connecticut hath wreath'd it 

Where her foliage waves, 
And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse 

Through all her ancient caves. 

Wachusett hides its lingering voice 

Within his rocky heart, 
And Alleghany graves its tone 

Throughout his lofty chart. 
Monadnock, on his forehead hoar 

Doth seal the sacred trust. 
Your mountains build their monument 

Though you destroy their dust. 

THE VASSALL FAMILY 

The Vassall coat of arms commemorates a distinguished 
colonial family which was unflinchingly loyal to the British crown 
during the American Revolution. The seven mansions still stand- 
ing in Brattle street, Cambridge, known as "Tory Row," which 
include the home of the poet Longfellow and "Elmwood," the 
birthplace of James Russell Lowell, were in 1774 the homes of 
the Vassall family. 

In that year the Vassalls altered their family motto from 
Saepe pro rcge, semper pro republica, which they had splendidly 
exemplified against Charles I. in the English Civil War, to Semper 
pro rege, and proceeded just as gallantly to live up to the revised 
version. In consequence the entire family was exiled and their 
estates confiscated. After their return to England in 1776 
members of the family distinguished themselves in the British 
army and navy. 

•64 




" ELMWOOD," CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
The home of Thomas Oliver, last royal lieutenant-governor of Massa- 
chusetts, whose wife was Elizabeth Vassall, sister to Col. John Vassall, 
who in turn married Elizabeth Oliver, sister to the lieutenant-governor. 




LONGFELLOW HOUSE AT CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

Washington's Headquarters at Cambridge, Mass. "The tent of Mars 

and the home of Muses." Built by Col. John Vassall in 1 759. 



65 



Colonel Spencer Vassall was mortally wounded in South 
America while charging at the head of his regiment at the storm- 
ing of Montevideo in Uruguay, when it was captured by the 
British in 1807. His bravery is commemorated by a monument 
in St. Paul's Church in Bristol, England, and by the augmented 
arms granted to his son, Sir Spencer Lambert Vassall, captain in 
the Royal Navy, who was knighted in 1838. This augmentation 
shows the breached bastion of a fortress with the words "Monte 
Video" and a new motto, "Every bullet has its billet," recording 
the heroic death of his father. Colonel Spencer Vassall was the 
son of Colonel John Vassall, 1738-1797, who, in the summer of 
1774, was driven by a mob from his Cambridge home. In less 
than a year the house was occupied by General Washington as 
his military headquarters. 

THF VASSALLS AND THE WASHINGTONS 

A curious comparison may be made between the Vassall and 
Washington families. From evidence now available it appears 
that the Washingtons, prior to coming to America, were royalists 
in every branch, with no sympathy for Cromwell and his ad- 
herents ; while in America, on the contrary, they furnished the 
head and front of the greatest and most successful revolution 
against the authority of the British crown in George Washington, 
a man of wealth and social standing in the colonies second only 
to Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. 

The Vassall family, on the other hand, furnished the pioneer 
revolutionist of wealth against the authority of King Charles. 
Samuel Vassall was probably the largest ship-owner of his day 
and was the first who refused to pay the tax of tonnage and 
poundage. xA.s a result, his property was seized and he himself 
thrown into prison for sixteen years by the Star Chamber Court. 
In 1641 the Long Parliament voted him over ten thousand pounds 
damages and resolved that he should be further recompensed for 
his personal suffering, but this was never paid. Notwithstanding, 
when the Parliamentary Party was in its greatest straits during 
the Civil War, this dauntless man repeatedly loaned sums of 
money to Parliament and also placed his ships at its disposal, 
among those thus employed being the famous "Mayflower." Later, 
when the Commonwealth was established, he headed a subscrip- 
tion list with £1,200 to carry on the war in Ireland. 

This bold and self-reliant man never came to America, al- 
though he was interested in the launching of the Rhode Island 

66 




VASSALL MONUMENT IN KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON 
On entering the church this monument stands on the left against the 



rear wall. The head of Samuel Vassall 
ment of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



turned toward the monU' 



67 



Colony, being associated in that enterprise with Oliver Cromwell, 
Sir Harry Vane and other fellow members of Parliament. He 
and his brother William were both named as assistants to the 
governor in the charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and William 
Vassall, who was our ancestor, came to Boston with Governor 
Winthrop in the "Arabella." Like all of the name, William 
Vassall, 1592-1655, was devotedly attached to the Episcopal 
church. He settled in Scituate, but in 1634, provoked by the 
persecution to which the Episcopalians were subjected, he returned 
to England. Later he went to Barbadoes and died there. His 
son, Captain John Vassall, sold the Scituate estate in 1661, but 
the daughters married and remained in this country. Our an- 
cestress, Frances Vassall, born in England in 1623, married James 
Adams, of Scituate, son of John Adams of the "Fortune," July 
16, 1646. Savage states that, as the daughter of an original 
patentee who had probably received nothing for his money 
advanced to the colony, she received from the General Court in 
1672 a grant of 150 acres. She was the mother of Margaret 
Adams, 1654-1737, who married John Pease, the founder of 
Enfield, and became the mother of the first child born here. 

In King's Chapel, Boston, stands the quaint baroque monu- 
ment of Samuel Vassall, which was erected in 1766 by his great- 
grandson, Florentius Vassall, of the Island of Jamaica, whose 
granddaughter and heiress was the celebrated Lady Holland, for 
over forty years the mistress of Holland House in London. The 
monument is constructed of colored marbles and adorned with 
a bust and the arms of the Vassall family, granted by Queen 
Elizabeth to John Vassall, father of Samuel and William, on 
account of his services against the Spanish Armada. 

HOMES OF THE COLONIAL DAYS 

Samuel's son, John Vassall, settled in Jamaica in the West 
Indies, but the latter's son, Major Leonard Vassall, lived in 
Boston, where, in 1727, he built a beautiful home in Summer 
street. This was the famous "Wayte Garden," fully described 
in the New England Genealogical and Historical Register for 
January, 1871, in an interesting article of fifteen pages under the 
title "A Home of the Olden Time." The site is mentioned as 
"the garden of Gamaliel Wayte" in the Boston "Book of Posses- 
sions," which resembles the Domesday Book in England. The 
house had a frontage of over 100 feet, with nine windows and two 

68 



doors below and eleven windows above. It stood three stories 
toward the street and had luthern or dormer windows in a 
gambrel roof. The ceilings were lofty and it had a richly wrought 
mahogany staircase leading to the third floor. The mahogany 
was brought from the Vassall estates in Jamaica. At about the 
same period Leonard Vassall also built for himself a summer 
home at Braintree (now Quincy), in which the parlor is paneled 
in mahogany from the same West Indian forests. Later this 
house became the home of the Adams family which gave two 
presidents to the United States. 

Leonard Vassall's Boston home had a garden vista 300 feet 
long. A poet of the period speaks of the "baronial courtyard," 
paved with blue and white stones in a fanciful pattern, the flower 
beds edged with box and the luxuriant growth of roses, syringa, 
honeysuckle and snowdrops, the octagon summer house at the 
far end;, of the garden, and a series of six arcades filled with 
panel work to correspond with the facade of the great stable, 
These details are interesting as illustrating the comfort and even 
luxury which our forefathers provided for themselves within a 
century after the first settlements were made in New England. 
This house was a typical, but not exceptional, New England home 
of the period. We are more apt to associate such a mode of living 
with Virginia than with New England. While many of the more 
substantial families of Virginia embraced the patriot cause, the 
chief proprietors of New England remained loyalists. Of course, 
the "Wayte Garden" house has long since disappeared, but the 
Vassall houses in Cambridge and Quincy are still standing, as 
well as the Royall house in Medford. This was built in 1732 by 
Isaac Royall, whose daughter Penelope in 1742 married Colonel 
Henry Vassall, a son of Leonard Vassall. 

On a knoll at the rear of the Royall house stood a summer 
house of great historical interest. Within its walls General John 
Stark, who made the Royall mansion his headquarters during 
the siege of Boston, together with General Lee, General Sullivan 
and others, planned the battle of Bunker Hill. Later Washington 
held councils here with his generals. It had previously been a 
favorite trysting place with the British officers, and many ro- 
mances are connected with it. It was here that Henry Vassall 
wooed Penelope Royall and Sir William Pepperell here won 
Elizabeth Royall. 

Further particulars of the Vassall family may be found in 
another article in the New England Historical and Genealogical 

69 



Register, volume XVII., page 56, entitled "The Vassalls of New 
England," by Edward Doubleday Harris. Leonard Vassall had 
seventeen children by his first wife, Ruth Gale, of Jamaica; by 
his second wife, Phebe Gross, he had one daughter. In 1730 he 
became instrumental in the founding of Trinity Church in Boston, 
the original edifice being located opposite his Summer street home. 
His son, Colonel John Vassall, married in 1734 Elizabeth Phips, 
daughter of Lieutenant-Governor Spencer Phips and granddaugh- 
ter of the celebrated Sir William Phips, conqueror of Port Royal 
and governor of Massachusetts. Colonel Vassall lived for a time 




TOMB OF 

COLONEL 

JOHN VASSALL 

17134747 

In Christ Churchyard 
Cambridge, Mass. 



nearly opposite the present Longfellow house in Brattle street, 
Cambridge, in the Belcher or Batchelder house, which he sold to 
his brother Henry in 1741. The elder brother, Colonel John 
Vassall, erected a monument in the graveyard of Christ Church 
in Cambridge, opposite the Harvard campus. Through the courtesy 
of a descendant of the Vassall family, Mrs. Cora E. Morgan, of 
Buffalo, N. Y. (who is also a descendant of Abigail Abbey, the 
elder sister of Captain Abbey, and wife of John Ward, who 
marched to Boston with the Enfield company), I am able to show 
a photograph of his tomb, now falling into decay after standing 



70 




THE ROYALL SUMMtR HOUSE 

in which the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned 

I See page 69) 




ROYALL HOUSE AT MHDFORD, MASS. 

The building at the left is the slave quarters, said to be the only slave quarters still 

standing in New England. 



71 



for 170 years. The massive freestone slab is inscribed with the 
Vassall arms and rests on five columns. Here Colonel Vassall 
was buried in 1747. He was graduated at Harvard in 1732; his 
brother Lewis in 1728, and William in 1733. It was the last- 
named brother who protested by proxy against the ordination of 
Rev. James Freeman (grandfather of James Freeman Clarke) 
in King's Chapel in 1785, and also against the change in the 
liturgy from the Episcopal to the Unitarian rite. His youngest 
son, Nathaniel, became a captain in the British navy. There were 
four other Vassalls graduated at Harvard, one of whom was the 
son of the Colonel Vassall buried in this tomb. This second 
Colonel John Vassall was born in 1738, married Elizabeth Oliver, 
sister of the last royal lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, was 
exiled in 1776, as already related, and, although his estates in 
Massachusetts were confiscated, lived in comfort on the revenues 
from his Jamaica estates until his death at Clifton, England, in 
1797. 

Leonard Vassall, of the "Wayte Garden" house, had a brother 
William born in Jamaica. William's son was Florentius Vassall, 
1710-1779, who in 1766 erected the monument to his great-grand- 
father, Samuel Vassall, in King's Chapel, Boston. His son, 
Richard Vassall, 1731-2-1795, married Mary Clark, daughter of 
Thomas Clark, of New York. They had one child, Elizabeth 
Vassall, 1770-1845, whose second husband was Lord Holland, 
the English statesman. Mrs. Richard Vassall, after the death of 
her husband, married Sir Gilbert Affleck, second baronet, of 
Dalham Hall, Suffolk, and died in 1836, aged 86. 



72 




Reception of the American Loyalists by Great 
Britain in 1 783 



From the painting by Benjamin West. At the head of the 
loyalists stands Sir William Pepperell, Baronet, grandson of the 
conqueror of Louisburg, upon whom was conferred the only 
baronetcy ever granted to a native of New England. Next to 
Pepperell stands William Franklin, last royal governor of New 
Jersey and son of Benjamin Franklin. At the right hand stands 
the artist, who succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the 
Royal Academy, together with his wife, both natives of Pennsyl- 
vania. It is gratifying to Americans to know that Benjamin West 
declined the knighthood which was offered him by George III. 



73 



A Crucial But Forgotten Episode of the Revo- 
lution and Its Significance on 
Its 142nd Anniversary 

In his "Life of Thomas Paine," Moncure D. Conway says 
that the loyalists of the American revolution have never had 
justice done them. This I believe is true. Consider for a 
moment the case of Thomas Oliver, 1733-1815, mentioned above. 
All accounts agree that he was a man of most benevolent dispo- 
sition and great courtesy. He was graduated at Harvard in 1753, 
married Elizabeth Vassall, sister of the Colonel Vassall who 
built the Longfellow house in Cambridge, and lived in great 
retirement at Elmwood, later the birthplace of James Russell 
Lowell. This mild-tempered, retiring gentleman was forced into 
the limelight of an arduous and unpleasant publicity through the 
offices conferred upon him by George III. The position of 
lieutenant-governor was an office clearly within the gift of the 
king, but his appointment to a seat in the council was not the 
king's prerogative, as, according to the royal charter, the position 
was subject to the election of the colonists. 

On September 2, 1774, his home was the scene of one of 
the most dramatic episodes of the revolution. Early in the day 
a committee of landowners from neighboring towns appeared in 
Cambridge. They told the lieutenant-governor that they "came 
peaceably to inquire into their grievances, not with design to hurt 
any man," and went their way. Oliver hastened to Boston and 
secured the promise of the governor, General Gage, that no troops 
would be sent. This action of Thomas Oliver undoubtedly fore- 
stalled bloodshed on this occasion, and but for his non-combative 
nature and conciliatory manner, it is probable that the actual 
hostilities of the revolution would have begun on September 2, 
1774, at Cambridge, instead of over seven months later at Lex- 
ington. 

On the afternoon of the same day a crowd of 4,000 sur- 
rounded Elmwood, of whom 1,000 bore arms. They demanded 
Oliver's resignation from the council. Forced by threats and 
the appeals of his family, he signed a paper under duress. The 
original committee did not invade his property, and endeavored 
to protect him from the insults of those who bore arms. Two 
other members of the illegal council and the sheriff and clerk of 
the county were, by like measures, induced to sign resignations. 

74 



A full account of this extraordinary occasion will be found in the 
second volume of Sabine's "Loyalists," page 129 to 135. Pro- 
scribed and banished and his estates confiscated, Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Oliver, like most of the wealthy and influential loyalists, 
later felt the pinch of poverty and died in exile in England. 

One hundred and forty-two years later, while I am writing 
these words, on September 2, 1916, the Congress of the United 
States is passing the eight-hour law for railway workers, forced 
thereto today by the same bold spirit manifested by American 
workingmen which animated their forebears in 1774. It is to be 
hoped that the railway magnates will take warning by the sad 
plight and unhappy fate of the loyalists of 1774 and yield grace- 
fully to the inevitable march of democracy toward a more 
equitable distribution of wealth. In the discussion of the eight- 
hour law it would be well, especially for members of the Repub- 
lican party, to recall the words of their great leader, President 
Lincoln, in his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 
1861: 

"In my present position I should scarcely be justified were I 
to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning 
despotism. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing, 
if not above, labor, in the structure of government. Labor is 
prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of 
labor and could not have existed if labor had not first existed. 
Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher 
consideration. Let the working people beware of surrendering 
a political power which they already possess, and which, if sur- 
rendered, will surely be used to shut the door of advancement 
for such as they, and fix new disabilities and burdens upon them 
until all of liberty is lost." 

The sentiments of Lincoln regarding capital and labor are 
probably not more acceptable to railway presidents in 1916 than 
they were when Lincoln gave utterance to them in 1861 ; but as he 
himself said : "I have said nothing but what I am willing to live 
by, and, if need be, to die by," and if ever man "gave the last 
full measure of devotion" to his ideas that man was Abraham 
Lincoln. 



75 



Lincoln on the Declaration of Independence* 

(Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on Washington's 
Birthday, 1861. Lincoln was on his way to Washington to be inau- 
gurated as President. Only a few hours previous he had been informed 
by Allan Pinkerton of the plot to assassinate him in the railway sta- 
tion at Baltimore on February 23. Bear in mind that Lincoln had just 
learned that eight men had drawn lots to kill him on the following- 
day.) 

All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn from 
the sentiments which originated, and were given to the world, 
from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did 
not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of 
Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which 
were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and 
adopted the Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over 
the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the 
army which achieved that independence. I have often inquired 
what great principle it was that kept this confederacy so long 
together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the 
colonies from the mother land, but that sentiment in the Declara- 
tion of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of 
this country, but, I hope, to the world for all future time. It was 
that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be 
lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an 
equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration 
of Independence. 

Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon this basis? 
If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the 
world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that 
principle it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be 
saved without giving up this principle, I would rather be assassin- 
ated on this spot than surrender it. 



76 



THE CAUSE OF STATES RIGHTS 

Another "Lost Cause" is represented by the shield of the 
Confederacy with its reproduction of Thomas Crawford's statue 
of George Washington. When the statue arrived in Virginia the 
people of Richmond in their enthusiasm dragged it by hand to 
Capitol Hill. Mr. Crawford died in 1857, and his widow, a sister 
of Julia W'ard Howe, in 1861 married Luther Terry, the artist, 
who painted the famous signboard of the Abbe Inn at Enfield. 




THE ABBE INN AND TEA ROOM AT ENFIELD 

The signboard was painted by Luther Terry, the artist, step- 
father of Marion Crawford, the novelist. It was retouched in 
1866 by Mr. Terry's nephew, Luther Terry Knight. On the 
reverse side from the American eagle the Britis'h lion is depicted 
in chains. The Abbe House, now kept by Mr. and Mrs. William 
A. Abbe, has been in Mr. Abbe's family for generations. It was 
built by Peter Reynolds Field, is said to be 125 years old and has 
always been a tavern. 



77 



THE MEXICAN QUESTION 

The coat-of-arms of Mexico recalls the defeat of that country 
by the United States in 1848. How unfortunate for the people 
of that unhappy land that our government did not hold all that 
we then won by force of arms. In the 68 years that have elapsed 
since then, can anyone doubt that Mexico, as a territory of the 
United States, would have developed into another Texas or 
California under the same conditions? By the same token, does 
it not seem uncharitable to relinquish the Philippines? Left to 
their own resources and devices, I fear the Filipinos are likely 
to relapse into even worse barbarism than the Mexicans, if, as 
they would be quite unable to defend themselves, they are not, 
like the Coreans, speedily seized and exploited by the Japanese. 
As we have taken up the white man's burden in the Far East, 
it seems ungenerous to abandon the little brown men either to 
the Japanese or to their own present incompetence. 

PRESIDENT WILSON ON MEXICO. 

I feel impelled to quote the following passages on the Mexi- 
can situation from the President's speech at Shadow Lawn, New 
Jersey, on September 2, 1916, because it seems to me not only 
a clean-cut statement of facts and a complete exposition of the 
principles of a new and higher diplomacy than the world has yet 
known, but also because in these sentences we have one of the 
most eloquent and impassioned speeches in our language. If the 
speakers of antiquity surpassed it I do not know in which of the 
most famous orations that have been handed down to us. Cer- 
tainly never before has an American President had the moral 
courage to let himself go as in this speech, and the power, sincerity 
and simplicity of a great soul vibrate in every line. Most con- 
vincing is the sentence : "Mistakes I have made in this per- 
plexing business, but not in purpose." A lesser man would have 
said : "If I have made mistakes." 

"the: new freedom" in diplomacy. 
While Europe was at war our own continent, one of our 
own neighbors, was shaken by revolution. In that matter, too, 
principle was plain, and it was imperative that we should live up 
to it if we were to deserve the trust of any real partisan of the 
right as free men see it. We have professed to believe, and we 
do believe, that the people of small and weak states have the 

78 



right to expect to be dealt with exactly as the people of big and 
powerful states would be. We have acted upon that principle 
in dealing with the people of Mexico. 

PURSUIT OP BANDITS. 

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory was no 
violation of that principle. We ventured to enter Mexican ter- 
ritory only because there were no military forces in Mexico that 
could protect our border from hostile attack and our own people 
from violence, and we have committed there no single act of 
hostility or interference even with the sovereign authority of the 
Republic of Mexico herself. It was a plain case of the violation 
of our own sovereignty which could not wait to be vindicated by 
damages and for which there was no other remedy. The authori- 
ties of Mexico were powerless to prevent it. 

Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable 
wrongs against the persons, of Americans have been committed 
within the territory of Mexico herself during this confused 
revolution, wrongs which could not be effectually checked so long 
as there was no constituted power in Mexico which was in a 
position to check them. We could not act directly in that mat- 
ter ourselves without denying Mexicans the right to any revolu- 
tion at all which disturbed us and making the emancipation of 
her own people await our own interest and convenience. 

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking — blindly, 
it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with profound and pas- 
sionate purpose and within their unquestionable right, apply 
what true American principle you will — any principle that an 
American would publicly avow. 

OUTSIDERS IN MEXICO. 

The people of Mexico have not been suffered to own their 
own country or direct their own institutions. Outsiders, men out 
of other nations and with interests too often alien to their own, 
have dictated what their privileges and opportunities should be 
and who should control their land, their lives and their resources — 
some of them Americans, pressing for things they could never 
have got in their own country. The Mexican people are entitled 
to attempt their liberty from such influences ; and so long as I 
have anything to do with the action of our great government I 
shall do everything in my power to prevent any one standing in 
their way. I know that this is hard for some persons to under- 

79 



stand; but it is not hard for the plain people of the United 
States to understand. It is hard doctrine only for those who 
wish to get something for themselves out of Mexico. There are 
men, and noble women, too, not a few, of our own people, thank 
God ! whose fortunes are invested in great properties in Mexico 
who yet see the case with true vision and assess its issues with 
true American feeling. The rest can be left for the present out 
of the reckoning until this enslaved people has had its day of 
struggle toward the light. I have heard no one who was free 
from such influences propose interference by the United States 
with the internal affairs of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the 
Mexican people has proposed it. 

AMERICAN SPIRIT. 

The people of the United States are capable of great sym- 
pathies and a noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. 
As their spokesman and representative, I have tried to act in 
the spirit they would wish me show. The people of Mexico are 
striving for the rights that are fundamental to life and happi- 
ness — 15,000,000 oppressed men, overburdened women and piti- 
ful children, in virtual bondage in their own home of fertile 
lands and inexhaustible treasure. Some of the leaders of the 
revolution may often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, 
but the revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The un- 
speakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitor- 
ously overthrew the government of which he was a trusted part, 
impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven his people 
to the rebellion with which he had pretended to sympathize. 
The men who overcame him and drove him out represent at 
least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies at the very 
heart of liberty ; and so long as they represent, however imper- 
fectly, such a struggle for deliverance I am ready to serve their 
ends when I can. So long as the power of recognition rests 
with me the government of the United States will refuse to 
extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains power in a 
sister republic by treachery and violence. No permanency can 
be given the affairs of any republic by a title based upon intrigue 
and assassination. I declared that to be the policy of this Admin- 
istration within three weeks after I assumed the Presidency. I 
here again vow it. I AM MORE INTERESTED IN THE 
FORTUNES OF OPPRESSED MEN AND PITIFUL 
WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAN IN ANY PROPERTY 

80 



RIGHTS WHATEVER. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this 
perplexing business, but not in purpose or object. 

ALIv AMKRICA WATCHES. 

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico 
and the relations of the United States with a distressed and dis- 
tracted people. All America looks on. Test is now being made 
of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and 
are indeed to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among 
our weaker neighbors. We have undertaken these many years 
to play big brother to the republics of this hemisphere. This is 
the day of our test whether we mean, or have ever meant, to 
play that part for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. 
Upon the outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not 
in ours) depends every relationship of the United States with 
Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and enter- 
prise. These are great issues, and lie at the heart of the gravest 
tasks of the future, tasks both economic and political and very 
intimately inwrought with many of the most vital of the new 
issues of the politics of the world. The republics of America 
have in the last three years been drawing together in a new spirit 
of accommodation, mutual understanding and cordial co-opera- 
tion. Much of the politics of the world in the years to come 
will depend upon their relationships with one another. It is a 
barren and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such 
things ! 



81 



THE TRAIL OF THE ABBEY FAMILY. 

The trail of the Abbey family, in the direct line from the 
immigrant, John Abbey of Wenham, through Captain Thomas 
Abbey of the Revolution to Lieutenant Henry Abbey, Jr., now 
serving under General Pershing in Mexico, as shown in the in- 
scriptions and seals on this Enfield memorial, stretches from 
rugged Massachusetts Bay to the smiling Connecticut valley; 
thence across New York State, with a halt at Franklin in Dela- 
ware County, where Seth Alden Abbey was born, and another 
halt at Watertown in Jefferson County, where his sons, Henry 
Gilbert Abbey and Edwin Alden Abbey, were born; the next 
trek was into the Western Reserve of Connecticut at Cleveland, 
Ohio; and thence, ever westerly, some going by way of the 
Isthmus of Panama and others by the Santa Fe trail across the 
plains, they became a part of the great drift which began in 1849 
and led to California, to Oregon, to Arizona and latest of all, to 
Mexico. 

A STUDY IN HEREDITY. 

The preparation of these inscriptions has been a study in 
heredity. My grandfather and his elder brother, Dorrephus 
Abbey, were clearly inspired by the example and teachings of their 
grandfather, Captain Abbey ; and I find similar traits and actions 
cropping out all along the line. In every American war the 
Abbeys have been animated by the spirit of 1775, and to-day, as 
I write these words, their latest and youngest defender of the 
flag is upholding the traditions of the family in Mexico. 

Henry Abbey, Jr., failing to secure the appointment to West 
Point which he sought, volunteered as a private in the cavalry, 
passed his examinations for a lieutenancy, married his major's 
daughter, and in March, 1916, crossed the Mexican border with 
the Tenth Cavalry in the pursuit of Villa, which followed the 
Mexican General's raid on Columbus, New Mexico. 

In what particular will the future historian discriminate 
between this little raid of Mexican bandits into the United States 
and the big raid of German bandits into Belgium? There are 
differences in quality even in bandits, and it has not been charged 
against Villa that either he or any of his ancestors ever pledged 
themselves in writing or otherwise to keep their hands off of the 
United States, as nobody questions that Germany did on a 
celebrated "scrap of paper" with regard to her neighbor, Belgium. 

82 



To my unkultured mind Villa seems a more decent brigand than 
Wilhelm, when one takes into account the opportunities for en- 
lightenment enjoyed by these respective raiders. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 
I wish to acknowledge the great assistance afforded me in 
the difficult task of wording the inscriptions by Mr. Wesley 
Weyman, the pianist. Those who admire his art as a musician 
of the first rank are perhaps not aware that genealogy is his 
recreation. I am also indebted for valuable aid to Miss Sara 
Anna Dunn, music critic of the New York Sun; to Miss Susan 
Hayes Ward, the author and critic, and to her brother, Dr. 
William Hayes Ward, the editor of The Independent; to Miss 

j Kate Dickinson Sweetser, whose writings are introducing chil- 
dren in so attractive a manner to the boys and girls of Dickens, 
George Eliot and Thackeray, and to the children of history, not 
to mention her Indian braves ; to Mr. Eckstein Case, secretary 
and treasurer of the Case School of Applied Science; to the 
editor of The Atlantic Monthly for permission to use the poem, 
"The Captain's Drum" ; and I must acknowledge my debt to that 
noble gallery of American men and women, The National 
Cyclopaedia of American Biography, and particularly to its Con- 

i spectus, which is an inspiration to patriotic endeavor. From my 
recent thorough and exhaustive study of this interesting work I 
am persuaded that Dean Stanley was correct when he said that 
the United States, more than any other country in the world, 
furnishes examples of the finest men and women that have ever 
lived. Does not such a tribute as that, from our Mother Country, 
prove that the American experiment, our " Great Adventure" in 
democracy, is proving itself a success? By their fruits ye shall 
know them. 

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington, 
and if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone 
would entitle them to the respect of mankind. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 



83 



THE SPIRIT OF 1775 

By Allan Dawson. 

[Leading Editorial in the New York Globe on January 17, 1916. j 

"I want to see in my country," says Elihu Root, "the spirit 
that beat in the hearts of the men at Concord Bridge, who were 
just and God-fearing men, but who were ready to fight for their 
liberty." A timely and inspiring declaration ! The wish will be 
echoed by every true American. 

The spirit of Concord! It was a spirit that put a higher 
value on moralities than on materialities. It was not satisfied 
with the philosophy that teaches that physical comfort is the 
supreme objective of life. It did not place personal and national 
prosperity first. Little actual oppression had come to the men 
who stood behind the bridge. To yield to the soldiers of King 
George was the easy and "practical" thing to do. 

The immediate issue, in many ways abstract, little touched 
the average man. The taxes levied by the British government 
were not excessive. But there was something in these embattled 
farmers that forbade them to compromise their freedom — that 
whispered an imperative mandate to preserve intact a great 
tradition. They measured duty, as duty must always be meas- 
ured, from the moral side. In these days let every American 
search his heart and say whether he feels an equal allegiance to 
things more precious than personal well-being. If he does not, 
let him restore himself. 

The spirit of Concord did not merely stand for liberty in 
America, but for liberty everywhere. The privileges defended 
with the old flint-locks were such as the men of Massachusetts 
believed all mankind should enjoy and, in the fulness of time, 
would enjoy. The shot whose firing was heard 'round the world 
was for a universal and not a provincial principle. During 150 
years of salutary neglect the colonials, free of the pressure of 
feudalism and its remainders, had developed a democracy. 

In one hundred and forty years the seed planted at Concord 
and watered with patriot blood has had a mighty growth. The 
world has been transformed. Another King George sits at West- 
minster, but he reigns rather than rules. His government is an 
expression of the ideas of the men of Concord rather than the 
ideas of his great-grandfather. To every land and among people 
the most backward democratic light has penetrated. A few 

84 



months ago it seemed as if democracy had won its battle ; that 
right, not might or privilege, was to rule ; that men were to be 
brothers, not enemies ; that each national group was to be secure 
as it pursued its internal improvement and caught inspiration from 
a wholesome rivalry. 

Then came a war, for whose beginning no one has yet given 
an adequate explanation, to shatter the dream. The security 
was a sham security. There are those in the world who refuse 
to abide a common beneficent law, and these are strong. The 
banner of conquest has been unfurled, and the world has become 
dangerous to every peaceful, democratic nation. The Attila 
doctrine is revived that the warlike are authorized to seize the 
possessions of the unwarlike — that a strong arm and the ability to 
seize are the only sources of title. 

Whether the upholders of this sinister principle will be 
broken in a new battle of Chalons (which was fought A. D. 451 
on the banks on the Marne 50 miles nearer to Paris than Verdun 
and resulted in the death of 160,000 men in one day), or whether 
they will sweep on to engulf both hemispheres, are questions to 
be answered by the future. But the result is sufficiently doubtful, 
and there is enough probability that formerly pacific nations will 
become infected with the disease against which they have 
struggled, to make it criminal folly for this country to assume 
it can trust to right alone to protect it. The oceans, once broad, 
have diminshed to ferry space. The two seaboards of the 
Atlantic are now closer than were New York and Boston in 
Concord days. Diabolic invention has made unassisted valor 
valueless. Unless we hold in light esteem the principles on which 
this country was founded and have sunk to a gross materialism 
that will invite, if it does not justify, attack, we must prepare 
ourselves to defend not only the soil of America but that tract 
of spiritualities that is the true and abiding America. It is plain 
to every man who takes trouble to think that ideas backed by 
force are loose in the world, that must be met and checked or else 
this republic cannot expect to endure. The antagonism between 
Rome and Carthage was not more deadly than that which now 
exists between the ideals of diffuse, individualistic and pacific 
democracy and those of centralized, regimentized and militant 
autocracy. The two systems face each other, and one or the 
other must go. The world cannot exist half slave and half free. 
Thus the war in Europe closely concerns us, and thus it is that 

85 



we have need to lose no time in getting ready for a struggle that 
may burst on us with the suddenness that it burst on Belgium 
and the other peoples. 

PATRICK HENRY'S PLEA FOR PREPAREDNESS 

IN 1775. 

If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those 
inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contend- 
ing; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which 
we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged our- 
selves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest 
shall be obtained, we must fight ! I repeat it, we must fight ! An 
appeal to arms and the God of Hosts is all that is left us. 

There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our 
chains are forged ! Their clanking may be heard on the plains 
of Boston. The next breeze that sweeps from the north will 
bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. 

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
price of chains and slavery? 

I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, 
give me liberty, or give me death. 

Address before the Virginia Convention in St. John's Church, 
Richmond, March 2, 1775. 



86 



Famous Descendants of the Immigrants Named 
on the Seats 

ABBE. 
General George B. McClellan, 1826-1885, was an Abbe 
descendant through his great-grandmother, Rachel Abbe, of 
Windham, the wife of General Samuel McClellan of the Revo- 
lution, who led a troop of Connecticut cavalry at Bunker Hill. 
The mother of De Witt McClellan Lockman, the well known 
portrait painter, was also an Abbe of Windham. 

FAIRFIELD. 
Among the descendants of the Fairfield family who have 
distinguished themselves I note the following: John Fairfield, 
1797-1847, twice Governor of the State of Maine; Sumner Lin- 
coln Fairfield, 1803-1844, the poet; Edmund Burke Fairfield, 
1821, second chancellor of the University of Nebraska; William 
Fairfield Warren, first president of Boston University, and Wes- 
ley Weyman, the pianist. 

PEASE. 
The most distinguished descendant of the founder of Enfield, 
Captain John Pease, 1654-1734, in the direct line was probably 
Elisha Marshall Pease, 1812-1883. Born in Enfield, he early 
made his way to the far West and took part with Sam Houston 
in the revolution which freed Texas from Mexico in 1836. He 
drafted the constitution and the laws of the new republic. After 
Texas was admitted to the Union, Mr. Pease served for three 
terms as Governor of the State. Henry Roberts Pease also 
migrated to the West and became United States Senator from 
Mississippi, while Calvin Pease went to Vermont and became 
president of the State University. 

GOODELL. 
Among the Goodell family I note Rev. William Goodell, 
D. D., 1792-1867, missionary to Turkey for over 40 years, who 
preached in eight languages and translated the whole Bible into 
Armeno-Turkish ; Henry H. Goodell, president of the Massachu- 
setts Agricultural College, and David Harvey Goodell, Governor 
of the State of New Hampshire. 

87 



THE ADAMS FAMILY. 
John Adams, who came to Plymouth on the Fortune in 
1621, was the first of the name to set foot on these shores, but 
the descendants of his brother Henry, who settled in Braintree 
in 1640, have outstripped those of the first arrival, and include 
more illustrious men in a single direct line than any other family 
in America. Both of the immigrants are supposed to be brothers 
of Thomas Adams, of Plymouth, in England, who was an 
original grantee of the Massachusetts charter and assistant to 
Governors Cradock and Winthrop. John Adams, second Presi- 
dent of the United States, once remarked that he was more 
proud of his "descent for 160 years from a line of virtuous, 
independent New England farmers than from regal or noble 
scoundrels since the flood." Agriculture seems to incline men 
to independence of thought and action, while the modern factory 
life seems to have almost the effect of a penitentiary upon the 
workers. Witness the subservience of the German people since 
Germany has become industrialized and think what the same 
people were in the revolution of 1848, when Germany was still 
an agricultural country, as she was in the heroic days of 1814. 
It seems to be "back to the soil," if you would have freemen 
instead of machines ready and apparently willing to be cannon- 
food for the modern Attila. 

UNPARALLELED RECORD OF SERVICES BY ONE 

FAMILY. 

The public services of Samuel Adams, "The Father of the 
American Revolution," foremost politician of his time and source 
of all the most important measures passed by the Continental 
Congress ; together with those of his second cousin, John Adams, 
Minister to France from 1777 to 1782, to England 1782 to 1788, 
and second President of the United States; of the latter's son, 
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, and of 
his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England dur- 
ing the Civil War — these I believe to be easily the most eminent 
and long-continued achievements of any one family in the re- 
corded history of this or any other nation. It was John Adams 
who suggested George Washington for commander-in-chief of 
the army, by this master stroke practically committing Virginia 
to Massachusetts policy of resistance and to the cause of inde- 
pendence. Adams retired from the Presidency after 26 years 



of uninterrupted service in a greater variety of trusts than fell 
to the lot of any other American of his time, and he was the 
only President who has had the satisfaction to see a son elected 
to the Presidency. John Quincy Adams signed more commercial 
treaties than had been negotiated since the foundation of the 
government, and after retirement from the Presidency served 
16 years as a Congressman. The "Monroe Doctrine" was 
undoubtedly originated by J. Q. Adams when Secretary of State, 
and he was its spirited and consistent promulgator and adherent. 
He was the chief opponent of slavery in Congress, and originated 
the emancipation doctrine upon the authority of which President 
Lincoln issued his proclamation. His son, Charles Francis 
Adams, was our Minister to Great Britain throughout the Civil 
War, and James Russell Lowell said of him that "None of our 
generals in the field, not Grant himself, did us better or more 
trying service than he in his forlorn outpost in London." The 
frigid, restrained manner characteristic of the Adamses stood him 
in good stead in that trying time, and his sturdiness and simplicity 
strongly appealed to the English mind. This service he followed 
up with his skillful adjustment of the Alabama claims at Geneva. 
This unique, continuous and unparalleled service by the 
members of a single family was not unworthily continued by 
Charles Francis Adams 2nd, whose memoirs have recently been 
published. He tells how both his father and grandfather were 
so absorbed in thinking and writing on public affairs that they 
did not care to get near to nature, whether in the woods or on 
the water. He is most amusing when he rails against "the terrible 
New England conscience," the dour New England Sabbath, and 
how he longed for Monday morning! He says his forbears 
were "by inheritance ingrained Puritans, and no Puritan by 
nature ever was really companionable." But all the same these 
men lived lofty lives and achieved vast results. The Adamses 
and their kind made a new and greater England here in America 
and developed democratic institutions in consistent harmony with 
Magna Charta and the work of Pym and Hampden, the English 
common law, and all the rights and privileges for which English- 
speaking freemen have fought and bled these hundreds of 
years. Races alien to our ideas of freedom and independence 
because of age-long repression, with no conception of political 
liberty and scant political talent because of lack of opportunity 
for its exercise under autocratic rule, have gathered around the 

89 



radiant nucleus of our revolutionary sires and threaten to engulf 
us. It must be made clear to them that the United States was 
an English colony, that we are still an English-speaking nation, 
and that other nationalities have had small part in the political 
making of this commonwealth. If they now desire to submit 
themselves and their future to the guidance of Obrigkeit or 
higher powers than the votes of their fellow citizens of America,, 
let them return to their feudal allegiance to Czar or Kaiser, and no 
longer be permitted to conspire in behalf of their imperial mas- 
ters amongst this self-ruling people. 

DEMOCRACY AND COLONIZATION. 

In the speech of Theodore Roosevelt, previously quoted, he 
insists that the immigrant be required to learn English or else go 
back to his native land. In this demand Mr. Roosevelt makes no 
appeal to race prejudice. His own ancestry is chiefly Dutch, 
but he recognizes that English is the language of this country, 
just as its founders and its institutions were of English origin. 
The true American does not fight to preserve these precious 
legacies because they are of English origin, but because he believes 
in the principles they represent. No people in the world have 
fought more valiantly for freedom than the Dutch; so have the 
Swiss, the French, the Italians, the Spanish and the Portuguese. 
The Germans and the Russians have also fought for freedom, but 
they have not yet succeeded in throwing off the yoke of dynastic 
and feudal tyranny. It is a curious thing that only those peoples 
who have developed democratic institutions have proved suc- 
cessful as colonizers, and only in proportion as the colonists 
themselves have developed democratically have the colonies be- 
come great and powerful. So, if the German people, and not 
merely their Hohenzollern and Junker masters, desire new places 
in the sun, they must first develop the sunshine of democracy in 
themselves. Colonies do not thrive on the soil of despotism. 

Before leaving the Adams family, work of theirs in lighter 
vein should be mentioned. William T. Adams, better known as 
"Oliver Optic," whose books for boys and girls had a great popu- 
larity a generation ago, was a descendant of Henry Adams of 
Braintree. 



90 



TERRY. 
Among the descendants of Captain Samuel Terry, 1661-1730, 
third captain of the Enfield trainband, were Major Nathaniel 
Terry, mentioned in the inscription on the pedestal as the ranking 
officer of the company enlisted by Captain Abbey ; General Alfred 
Howe Terry, 1827-1890, of the Civil War, and Rev. Roderick 
Terry, D. D., of Newport, R. I., formerly governor of the New 
York Society of Mayflower Descendants. 

ALDEN. 
The descendants of John Alden, "the Puritan scholar" of 
the Mayflower, are very numerous, and include many of the chief 
representatives of American literature and statesmanship, such 




as William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
among the poets ; Henry Mills Alden, for many years editor of 
Harper's Magazine, and all of the distinguished line, just de- 
scribed, that are descended from Hannah Bass Adams, who was 
the granddaughter of John Alden and the grandmother of John 
Adams, second President of the United States. 



KIBBE. 

Edward Kibbe of Boston, 1645, is said to have come from 

Exeter in England. He settled at Muddy River, now Brookline. 

His son, Elisha Kibbe, was baptized in the First Church in Boston 

in 1645, married Rachel Cooke, of Salem, and lived to be 97. 



91 



He was one of the first settlers of Enfield, and his youngest son, 
Isaac Kibbe, born in 1683, was the first boy born here. 
His daughter, Rachel Kibbe, born in 1688, lived until her 
100th year. As already noted, she remembered the raising of 
the second church edifice in Enfield in 1706, when "there 
was a great frolick which lasted 3 days." She married first 
Jonathan Bush, 1681-1746, and secondly Lieutenant John 
Meacham. She was the grandmother of Hannah Bush, the wife 
of Colonel Amos Alden. Her brother, Isaac Kibbe, 1683-1766, 
was the father of Isaac Kibbe, 1731-1779, who, during the revo- 
lution, kept the tavern which stood on the east side of Enfield 




street less than a quarter mile to the north of the meeting house, 
which he built and completed in 1775, and around which Captain 
Abbey drummed the Lexington Alarm. Another descendant of 
Elisha Kibbe, the pioneer settler, is the well known genealogist 
and authority on Enfield history, James Allen Kibbe, of Ware- 
house Point. 



BUSH. 
The most distinguished descendant of the Bush family is 
Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, the well known sculptor. 

"Under a republican form of government the individual's 
public duty to the state is as important as his private duty to his 
family." 



Washington's Farewell Address 

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people 
to make and to alter their constitutions of Government ; but the 
Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit 
and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon 
all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to 
establish Government, presupposes the duty of every individual 
to obey the established Government. 

All obstructions to the execution of its laws, all combinations 
and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the 
real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular 
deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destruc- 
tive to this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. 

In relation to this still subsisting war in Europe (England 
was then leading the fight of Europe against Bonaparte, just as 
she is to-day leading the struggle against the German Kaiser) my 
proclamation of the 22nd of April, 1793, is the index to my plan. 

After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights 
I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the 
circumstances of the case, had a right to take — and was bound 
in duty and interest to take — a neutral position. 

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, with- 
out anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity 
impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to main- 
tain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other 
nations. — September 17, 1796. 

If we mean to support the liberty and independence which 
have cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must 
drive far away the demon of party spirit. — George Washington. 



93 



The Legacy of Washington 

What has Washington left behind, save the glory of a name? 
The independent mind, the conscious pride, the ennobling principle 
of the soul, — a nation of freemen. What did he leave? He left 
us to ourselves. This is the sum of our liberties, the first principle 
of government, the power of public opinion, the only permanent 
power on earth. When did a people flourish, like the Americans? 
Yet where, in time of peace, has more use been made of the pen, 
or less of the sword of power? 

Napoleon, the contemporary of our Washington, is fast 
dying away from the lips of men. He who (like the German 
Kaiser to-day) shook the whole civilized earth; who, in an age of 
knowledge and concert among nations, held the world at bay; 
at whose exploits the imagination becomes bewildered, who, in the 
eve of his glory, was honored with the pathetic appellation of "the 
last lone captive of millions in war" — even he is now known 
only in history. The vast empire was fast tumbling to ruins 
(like that of "Berlin to Bagdad'') while he yet held the sword. 
He passed by and left no successor there ! The unhallowed light 
which obscured is gone ; but brightly beams yet the name of 
Washington! — From "America as a Moral Force," by Cassius 
Marcellus Clay, 1810-1903. 

MORAL FORCE MORE POWERFUL THAN PHYSICAL 

FORCE. 

[President Wilson's speech before the New York Press Club on 

June 30, 1916.] 

I have not read history without observing that the greatest 
forces in the world and the only permanent forces are the moral 
forces. We have the evidence of a very competent witness, 
namely, the first Napoleon, who said as he looked back in the 
last days of his life upon so much as he knew of human history, 
he had to record the judgment that force had never accomplished 
anything that was permanent. 

Force will not accomplish anything that is permanent, I 
venture to say, in the great struggle which is now going on on 
the other side of the sea. The permanent things will be accom- 
plished afterward, when the opinion of mankind is brought to 
bear upon the issues, and the only thing that will hold the world 
steady is this same silent, insistent, all-powerful opinion of man- 
kind. 

94 



Force can sometimes hold things steady until opinion has time 
to form, but no force that was ever exerted except in response 
to that opinion was ever a conquering and predominant force. 
I think the sentence in American history that I myself am proud- 
est of is that in the introductory sentences of the Declaration of 
Independence, where the writers say that a due respect for the 
opinion of mankind demands that they state the reasons for what 
they are about to do. 

I venture to say that a decent respect for the opinion of 
mankind demanded that those who started the present European 
war should have stated their reasons, but they did not pay any 
heed to the opinion of mankind, and the reckoning will come 
when the settlement comes. 

There are some gentlemen who are under the delusion that 
the power of a nation comes from the top. It does not. It comes 
from the bottom. The power and virtue of the tree does not 
come from the blossom and the fruit down into the roots, but it 
comes from the roots in the obscure passages of the earth where 
the power is derived which displays itself in the blossom and the 
fruit ; and I know that among the silent, speechless masses of the 
American people is slowly coming up the great sap of moral 
purpose and love of justice and reverence for humanity which 
constitutes the only virtue and distinction of the American people. 

THE COST OF FREEDOM. 
The lowest condition is reached when absolute and despotic 
power becomes necessary on the part of government, and indi- 
vidual liberty extinct. So, on the contrary, just as a people rise 
in the scale of intelligence, virtue and patriotism, and the more 
perfectly they become acquainted with the nature of government, 
the ends for it which was ordered, and how it ought to be admin- 
istered, and the less the tendency to violence and disorder within 
and danger from abroad, the power necessary for government 
becomes less and less, and individual liberty greater and greater. 
Liberty is the noblest and the highest reward bestowed on mental 
and moral development. Liberty and equality are high prizes to 
be won ; and are, in their most perfect state, not only the highest 
reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult 
to be won, and when won, the most difficult to be preserved. 

John C. Calhoun, 1848. 



9 5 



THE QUEST OF ANCESTORS 

[An article by Alden Freeman published in "Town and Country," on 
March 18, 1905, with some additional matter. John H. Flagg, author of 
"The Monarch, and Other Poems," "Lyrics of New England," etc., wrote of 
the original article as follows: "I was intensely interested in this genealog- 
ical article, which approaches a classic in style, arrangement, diction and 
general treatment."] 

A true and sincere study of genealogy should lead not to 
pride of ancestry by the picking and choosing of those forbears 
who distinguished themselves, but rather to a democratic feeling 
of brotherhood with all mankind; for, on going back only a few 
generations, we will find ourselves related to nearly all the 
inhabitants of a certain town such as Enfield or Duxbury, and 
among our fellow descendants will find some, perhaps, in the 
humblest walks of life; so, if pursued in the proper spirit, I be- 
lieve genealogical studies will lead, not to inordinate pride of 
birth, but rather to emulation of the virtues of distinguished 
ancestors and to sympathy and helpfulness for their less fortunate 
descendants. 

In joining patriotic and ancestral societies the feature which 
chiefly interested me was the study of particular periods of our 
history which it necessitates. With the personal interest aroused 
by discovering that those of our own blood took part in stirring 
events, the drybones of history take on flesh and the lusty hues of 
romance. In collecting the records of twenty-five ancestors for 
the Society of Colonial Wars I covered the whole period from the 
settlement of Jamestown to the battle of Lexington and came 
upon adventures quite as alluring as those described by Mary 
Johnston in "Audrey," or by Thackeray in "The Virginians," and 
which led across the sea to Scotland, to Wales, to Holland and to 
France, as well as to England. 



THE ALDEN FAMILY. 

Given the name of "Alden" tended to arouse my interest in 
all that related to my ancestor, John Alden, "the Puritan scholar." 
The family Bible records the descent back to Colonel Amos Alden, 
of Enfield, my great-great-grandfather, and when I was asked to 
join the Society of Mayflower Descendants I found no difficulty 
in proving my descent, as Colonel Alden's name was in the 
earliest published genealogy of the Alden family. When I say 

96 



"no difficulty" I do not wish it understood that there is no labor 
attached to securing admission to the Mayflower Society. None 
of the other ancestral societies approaches in strictness of positive 
proof of descent to the requirements of this society. Membership 
in it is therefore of the highest value in establishing the family 
record and also in making it permanent. It took me two or three 
months to secure all the documents and certificates required by 
the genial founder, Captain Richard Henry Greene, who then 
set me at work to establish a Mayflower Society in New Jersey. 



JOHN ALDEN'S CHAIR 

This chair has been for several generations in 
the Alden family, and, according to tradition 
in the family, belonged to John Alden, of the 
Mayflower. Timothy Alden brought it to 
Chautauqua, N. Y., in 1828 or 1829. 




Hannah Alden, 1771-1821, was the daughter of Colonel Amos 
Alden, 1745-1826. According to the Connecticut State Register, 
he was in 1800 captain of the Fifth Company, First Regiment, 
Connecticut Cavalry; major of the same, 1802-6, and lieutenant- 
colonel of the First Regiment in 1807. Amos Alden was de- 
scended from Joseph Kingsbury, of Dedham, 1641, from Thomas 
Hayward, an original proprietor and the earliest settler of Bridge- 
water, and from John Willis, first deacon of the Bridgewater 
church. Amos Alden's wife was Hannah Bush, who was de- 
scended from John Bush, of the "Alexander," 1634; from Thomas 
Lamb, of Roxbury, who came in the fleet with Winthrop in 1630; 
from Edward Kibbe, of Boston, 1645, who married Mary Part- 
ridge; from Henry Cooke, of Salem, 1638, who married Judith 
Burdsell in 1639, and from Richard French, 1674-1757, of Enfield. 

97 



The preparation of the papers required to join any of the 
patriotic societies opens up vistas of interesting ancestral person- 
ages. In the Duxbury military company I found marching with 
John Alden in 1643 his son Joseph ; John Willis, first representa- 
tive of Bridgewater in the general court of Plymouth colony and 
her deputy for twenty-five years ; Moses Simmons, of the "For- 
tune," 1621 ; John Harding, 1586-1669, deputy to the general 
court, and Thomas Hay ward, who came first in the " William 
and Francis," 1632, and secondly in the "Hercules," 1635. Like 
John Willis, the latter was an original proprietor of Bridgewater. 
To each of these members of the Duxbury trainband I traced 
descent, In the same year John Dunham, 1588-1669, representa- 
tive of Plymouth, 1639 to 1664; James Adams, of Marshfield, son 
of John, who came in the "Fortune," 1621 ; Thomas Harvey, 
1617-1651, of Taunton, and William Vassall, 1592-1655, of Scit- 
uate, marched side by side, and to each I likewise traced descent. 

Probably it never occurred to any of these ten men of 
sturdy English descent that the blood which they then risked in 
defence of Plymouth colony would be mingled in the veins of 
joint descendants of them all two centuries and a half later, with 
the blood of Huguenot Frenchmen, canny Scotsmen and stolid 
Dutchmen, which, with still other strains, go to make up the con- 
glomerate known as an American. 

THE VASSALL FAMILY. 
The family of Vassall particularly interested me. In their 
annals will be found a fruitful field for the historical novelist. 
They were an ancient Catholic family of Normandy, which in- 
cluded two cardinals and a marshal of France ; but Jean Vassall 
became a Huguenot and fled into England a few years before the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was one of the ancestors 
through whom I established my claim to membership in the 
Huguenot Society, which flourishes under the fostering care of its 
long-time secretary, Mrs. James M. Lawton, the daughter of 
General Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame. At his own 
cost this John Vassall fitted out and commanded two ships of war 
against the Spanish Armada. Later he became a member of the 
Virginia Company, which made the settlement at Jamestown in 
1607. While in London in 1900 I one day went down to Stepney 
and visited the ancient parish church of St. Dunstan's, where I 
saw the record of John Vassall's death "of the plague," September 
13, 1625. 

9S 



ELIZABETH VASSALL, LADY HOLLAND. 

Among the descendants of John Vassall, both in America 
and England, easily the most celebrated was Elizabeth Vassall, 
already mentioned, who married, as her second husband. Henry 
Richard Vassall-Fox, third Baron Holland. Both of her hus- 
bands, by the provisions of her grandfather's will, were required 
to assume the surname of Vassall. The family of her first hus- 
band, Sir Godfrey Vassall- Webster, Bart., owned Battle Abbey 
from 1719 to 1849, and in 1901 it was restored to the family as 
the property of her descendant, Sir Arthur Webster. 

Lord Holland was the nephew of the great statesman, Charles 
James Fox. While making the grand tour, and only twenty, he 




HOLLAND HOUSE 

The first of th* great historic houses of England which was restored 

and embellished by the heiress to an American fortune. 

met in Florence the beautiful Lady Vassall- Webster, aged twenty- 
three, and then began the love which ended only with his life. 
By act of Parliament the first marriage of Elizabeth Vassall was 
dissolved and she became the wife of Lord Holland. Together 
they set out upon a career of political and social success un- 
equaled before or since in English life. Lady Holland was a 
remarkable woman. Brilliant, witty, with a queenly grace of 
manner, she was also well informed, possessed of wonderful tact 
and, above all, gifted with common sense ; an ardent horticulturist, 
she planned gardens and introduced the dahlia into England ; as 



99 



warm a heart as ever beat, she never deserted a friend. She 
established the only true salon ever known in England, and there 
the great Whig party came into power. To comprehend the 
charm, distinction and power of the gatherings at Lady Holland's 
home one must read Macaulay's essay on Lord Holland, which 
shows more human feeling and affection than anything else from 
the great historian's pen ; or, if you would pursue the subject 
further, read "The Holland House Circle," by Lloyd Saunders. 
It has been said that from 1750 to 1850 the history of Holland 
House was the history of England. 




LLIZABLTH VASSALL, LADY HOLLAND 

From the portrait by Fagan 

Lady Holland was the friend of Madame de Stael, Georgiana 
Duchess of Devonshire, Talleyrand, Metternich, "Junius," Byron, 
Moore, Sheridan, Brougham, Walpole, Canova, Wilkie, Macaulay 
and Sidney Smith; in fact, of all the great men of her time, to 
mention only a few of the celebrities who met at her hospitable 
board. She took pity on the imperial bandit who ravaged Europe 
a century ago and cheered his captivity, both at Elba and at St. 
Helena. 



100 



CAESARISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY. 

History repeats itself again and again. The imperator of 
the twentieth century is only a harder, more brutal and more 
efficient Caesar than his Roman prototypes, not lacking even the 
play-actor traits and artistic yearnings of Nero. Nietzsche's 
"Power to Will," as promulgated through Treitschke and Bern- 
hardi and other German writers, incites to a ruthlessness and an 
unscrupulousness in the pursuit of power that halts at no enormity, 
and which, if unchecked, forecasts a repetition of the Dark Ages 
which succeeded the sway of the imperial madmen of Rome, and 
during which the waging of war became the only permanent busi- 
ness of mankind. 

The twentieth century Caesar has transformed whole nations 
into one vast Praetorian Guard. The obedient millions of Central 
Europe have bartered their liberties and all freedom of speech 
and action for a mess of pottage, for partem et circenses, as in 
Roman days. Their master feeds and clothes and houses his 
submissive serfs, including the fawning professors of his universi- 
ties, in the most efficient, scientific and economical manner. 
Caesar has become sacrosanct and infallible. He has spread his 
network of espionage over the whole earth. His agents voice his 
will in the parliaments and legislatures of every land. His Machia- 
vellian hand is seen even in the cabinets of nations with which 
he is at war. His Dionysian ear is like the dictograph and under 
every rooftree. He flatters the blind, driven cattle of his own 
land and tells them they shall inherit the earth. One simple- 
minded Teuton wrote me that he had discovered "why all the 
world hates the Germans." "The rest of the world is jealous of 
us," he declares, "because we are more intelligent, better educated 
and more moral than any other people, and therefore better fitted 
to govern the rest of the world than any other nation." 

The Lusitania, May 7, 1915. 

Not all the seven oceans 

Shall wash away the stain ; 
Upon a brow that wears a crown 

I am the brand of Cain. 

Joyce Kilmer. 



101 



GERMANY IN TIMES PAST. 
What has become of the Germany that all the world loved 
and respected ; the Germany of Huss and Luther, of Leibnitz and 
Kant, of Goethe and Schiller, of Beethoven and Mozart; the 
Germany of Andreas Hofer and Kossuth, of Carl Schurz and 
Franz Sigel, of Heine and Wagner? Where is the old-time 
respect for art, the old-time defiance of tyrants, the former love 
of liberty? I cannot believe that the people who have produced 
leaders in every field of thought and action, mighty champions of 
freedom, are so entirely changed, so basely degenerated as their 
warlord would have us to think, but only throttled and gagged, 




NAPOLEON'S 
SNUFF BOX 

Bequeathed by him to Elizabeth 
Vassall'Fox, Lady Holland. 
Now in the British Museum 



and will ere long destroy the military Frankenstein which now 
enthralls them and once more show themselves to be freemen 
and brothers to the rest of mankind in the age-long struggle for 
liberty, worthy descendants of the Germans who threw off the 
yoke of Napoleon in 1814 and kinsmen of the revolutionists of 
1848. One lone voice has been raised in protest in the German 
Reichstag, that of a man worthy to be president of the United 
States of Central Europe. I refer, of course, to Karl Liebnecht, 
who, in consequence of his courage and independence, now lan- 
guishes in a German prison. 

"Man is not the mere creature of the state. Man is older 
than nations, and he is to survive nations. All nations are bound 



102 



to respect the rights of every human being." — William Ellery 
Channing. 

At this time to understand Lady Holland, an Englishwoman's 
kindness to Napoleon, it is necessary to recall that the French 
emperor, brigand though he was, was not charged with systematic 
inhumanity ; that he conducted his campaigns in accord with the 
accepted law of nations ; that he did not make war on women 
and children nor on unarmed men. At his death Napoleon sent to 
Lady Holland by the hands of his faithful friends, Counts Bert- 
rand and Montholon, "as token of gratitude and esteem," the gold 
snuffbox presented to him at Tolentino in February, 1797, by 
Pope Pius VI. 

ROMANCE IN THE MORGAN FAMILY. 

In King Philip's war I found Nathaniel Hayward, son of 
Thomas Hayward, of Bridgewater, already mentioned ; John 
Shaw, son of Abraham Shaw, of Dedham, 1637 ; John Whit- 
marsh, son of John Wnitmarsh, who arrived with Hall's party 
from Weymouth, England, in 1635, and also Thomas Abbey and 
Miles Morgan, the hero of Springfield. The story that John Alden 
fell in love with Priscilla Molines while the "Mayflower" lay at 
Southampton finds its duplicate in the tale of young Miles 
Morgan, who, wandering in January, 1636, on the wharves at 
Bristol, beheld the fair Prudence Gilbert, about to sail with her 
parents for z\merica, and thereupon hastily determined to embark 
in the same ship. On landing in Boston Miles joined the explor- 
ing party of Colonel William Pynchon, which located the town of 
Springfield. Although the only pioneer admitted who was less 
than twenty-one years of age, he soon became second in command. 
No sooner had the youth received his allotment of land than he 
started back on foot with an Indian guide to Beverly, where the 
Gilbert family had settled. There he and Prudence were married. 
He brought her back, also on foot, with the Indian and a horse 
purchased in Beverly, both laden with the bride's household goods, 
and going before, while Captain Morgan, following with his 
matchlock and with his bride by his side, made his way through 
the trackless forest to their new home in the wilderness. Here 
are a courtship and marriage as romantic as those of John Alden 
and Priscilla, waiting for a Longfellow to enshrine them in verse. 
This story is gleaned from ''The Family of Morgan," by the 
eminent Shakespearean scholar. Dr. Appleton Morgan. 

103 



Mr. Morgan tells an interesting tale of Miles Morgan's 
grandfather, Sir William Morgan, of Tredegar in Wales, where 
he entertained Charles I. for two days in July, 1645, a month after 
the king's decisive defeat at Naseby. Four generations further 
back in this line we find Thomas Morgan of Machen serving as 
esquire of the body to the first of the Tudor kings, Henry VII., 
and Mr. Morgan carries this Welsh lineage to the Tudor family 
itself, also to the great Cadwallader and other British and Welsh 
kings of the seventh century. From Thomas Morgan of Machen 
the line is traced down to Sir Henry Morgan, the famous buc- 
caneer who ravaged the Spanish Main, capturing entire Spanish 
squadrons and holding:: up large cities for ransom. Old Panama 
he sacked and destroyed in 1671, but it was so substantially built 
that after nearly 250 years its ruins are still impressive. Not- 
withstanding his cruelty and looting, James II. knighted him and 
made him governor of Jamaica on account of the damage he 
had inflicted on England's Spanish foes. He left no descendants. 
In this tercentenary of Shakespeare it is interesting to note a 
bequest by a Morgan widow in the seventeenth year of Henry 
VIII. (1526) to her curate, Sir Thomas Schaftespere, said to be 
an ancestor of the great William. 

Among the members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
Company of Boston I found, in the year 1644, Robert Crosman, 
who settled in Taunton in 1645, and in 1661, Captain John Pease, 
whose son, likewise Captain John Pease, was the founder of 
Enfield. 

ALLEN'S UNIQUE "HISTORY OF ENFIELD." 

Through the generosity of Francis Olcott Allen, Enfield 
possesses the most complete historic record of any town in this 
country, published in three volumes of a thousand pages each, in 
which I have been able to see how my maternal ancestors lived 
and moved and had their being, as in a looking-glass. Here I 
read of Samuel Terry, third captain of the town's militia and 
deputy to the general court of Massachusetts before the boun- 
daries were so altered in 1750 that Enfield became a part of 
Connecticut; and of the long line of warlike Abbeys, beginning 
with John, who came in the "Bonaventure" and settled in Salem 
in 1636; his son Thomas, who settled in Enfield after King Philip's 
war; his grandson, Lieutenant Thomas Abbey, and his great- 
grandson, Thomas Abbey, ensign and lieutenant in the French 

104 



and Indian wars, and afterward captain in the revolution, whose 
service I was invited to represent in the Society of the Cincinnati. 

THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI. 
The Continental officers, indignant at a Congress which 
failed to make provision for disabled officers and for the widows 
and orphans of deceased soldiers, resolved to undertake their 
relief by starting a fund to which each should contribute one 
month's pay. Their society was founded on May 13, 1783, at 
the Verplanck house, still standing on the banks of the Hudson 
at Fishkill, New York. At that time the already venerable 
mansion of the Verplanck family was the headquarters of Baron 




The Order of the Society of the Cincinnati, designed by Major L'Enfant the French 
engineer, who made the plan of the city of Washington. 

Steuben, who organized the society with the co-operation of 
General Knox, Alexander Hamilton, General Lafayette and other 
officers of the Revolution. They chose George Washington for 
the first president of the society. 

After the lapse of 133 years it is interesting to recall that 
at the time of its founding the Society of the Cincinnati was 
regarded with suspicion as the entering wedge of returning 
despotism, that many feared it might result in the establishment 
in America of an hereditary aristocracy and that even monarchy 
itself might, through its malign influence, be restored. Out of 
this opposition to the Society of the Cincinnati, which was so 
serious and so active that Washington and his advisers at one 

105 



time contemplated the abandonment of the project altogether, 
there developed the most powerful organization in municipal 
politics that this country has ever known. It appears to be un- 
questioned that the Society of Tammany was organized in New 
York City to protect democratic institutions from the supposed 
menace of the Society of the Cincinnati. 

THE HARVEY FAMILY. 
Another line which interested me was the Harvey family. 
''The Harvey Book," by Oscar J. Harvey, of Wilkesbarre, Pa., 
is a model for genealogists. From it I learned of Turner Harvey, 
the favorite longbowman and archer of Henry VIII., and his son, 
William Harvey, who managed to retain his office in the College 




MOUNT GULIAN 
Homestead of th- Verplanck Family at Fishkill-orvthe-Hudson, in which the Society 
of the Cincinnati was organized, May 13, 1783. 

of Heralds during a period of thirty years, through all the dis- 
turbances of four Tudor reigns, when the state religion was 
alternately Protestant and Catholic. Henry VIII. made him 
Somerset herald, and he represented Edward VI. "in the King's- 
coat" at the funeral of Queen Katherine Parr. King Henry sent 
him on official visits to the court of Denmark, to Emperor Charles 
V. and to Maurice, Duke of Saxony. Edward VI. made him 
Norroy King of Arms, and seven times sent this trained and 
typical diplomatist on embassies to Germany. It was he whom 
Queen Mary sent June 7, 1557, to declare war against France, 
when urged thereto by her husband, Philip II., and she created 

106 



him Clarenceux King of Arms, which office he retained under 
Elizabeth until his death. Most of these particulars I gathered at 
the College of Heralds in London, from "A History of the College 
of Arms," published in 1805. William Harvey seems to have 
been of a choleric temper, but "his abilities were considerable." 
He was free of the Skinners' Company (furriers' guild), and "in 
1561 he gave both a crest and supporters to their arms." In the 
Public Record Office, close to the law courts in the Strand. I 
found grants of arms to various families signed by him, one 
of which, dated 1559, I had copied, as it contained, in the illumi- 



W1LLIAM HARVEY 

1553 

From Thane's "Portrai s and 

Autographs of Royal and 

Illustrious Personages." 







TtelbrtrmC axd'Anivgra/iA,tf 
"WIIj: HEiVY. 




nated initial letter, a portrait of my ancestor dressed in his 
herald's coat, or tabard, of arms. These grants all begin: 
"To all and singular, etc." It is little incidents like this that make 
the genealogical question so beguiling. 

William Harvey, brother of Turner Harvey, the longbowman 
of Henry VIII., who was so strong that after his death no one 
was able to draw his bow, had a famous grandson in Dr. William 
Harvey, 1578-1657, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. 
He left no descendants, but there is a fine statue of him at his 
birthplace, Folkestone, on the Kentish coast. Like his second 
cousin, W r illiam Harvey, the diplomatist, he w T as intimately con- 



[07 



nected with the court, and was physician to James I. and Charles I. 
He frequently prosecuted his anatomical experiments in the pres- 
ence of the latter king, whose fortunes he followed during the 
civil war, being present at the battle of Edgehill, and retiring 
with him to Oxford. It was in 1619, while physician to St. 
Bartholomew's hospital in London, that he made his great dis- 
covery. His adherence to the royal cause cost him this position in 
1644, but he continued to lecture at the College of Physicians, 





STATUE OF DR. WILLIAM HARVEY 

in Folkestone, England 
The discoverer of the circulation of the blood 

where, in 1652, he had the rare honor of seeing his own statue 
placed in the college hall. He enjoyed the intimacy of the king, 
of Sir Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Dryden, Cowley and other persons 
of note, and lived to be considered the first anatomist and physi- 
cian of his time, and to see his discoveries universally acknowl- 
edged. 



Other parts of the original article in 'Town and Country," entitled "The Quest 
of Ancestors," will be found in the following sketch of the Freeman family as well 
as in preceding sections of this pamphlet. 



108 



The Freemans of Woodbridge, New Jersey 

Through the efforts of Daniel Freeman, of Los Angeles, 
California, the Freeman family, of Woodbridge, has been traced 
back in England to the reign of Henry VI. , when John Freeman 
lived in Bentley, Northamptonshire, in 1442. Of my father's 
family the immigrant ancestor was Judge Henry Freeman, of 
Woodbridge, whose sister Elizabeth married John Ford and 
settled in Morristown. Her son, Colonel Jacob Ford, Sr., about 
1773 built the house now known as "Washington's Headquar- 




WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS AT MORRISTOWN, N. J. 

The mother of Col. Jacob Ford, senior, who built the house, was Elizabeth Freeman, 
of Woodbridge, N. J. This roof sheltered more of the heroes of the Revolution than 
any other in America. 



ters," in that town, and her grandson, Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr., 
about 1768, built the stone house at Mount Hope, N. J. 

It was in the house at Mount Hope that Elizabeth Freeman 
spent the last four years of her life, dying there April 21, 1772, 
aged 91 years and 1 month. Her great-grandson, Judge Gabriel 
H. Ford, kept a diary. Shortly before his death, in his eighty-fifth 
year, under date of June 21, 1849, he wrote that he was seven 
years old at the time of the death of his great-grandmother, 
"whose short stature and slender, bent person I clearly recall, 
having lived in the same house with her." From her, he says, 



109 



the Ford family learned that her father fled from England to 
avoid persecution. This confirms the tradition of the Freeman 
family that he was a Quaker. According to the census record of 
1772, Elizabeth Freeman "came into Philadelphia when there was 
but one house in it, and into this province (East Jersey), when 
she was but one year and a half old." Judge Ford says that 
"while landing his goods her father fell from a plank into the 
Delaware river and was drowned between the ship and the shore, 
leaving a family of young children in the wilderness." The 
Freemans of Woodbridge made their advent in America with 
this dire misfortune in 1682, the same year in which William 
Penn made his first vovasfe to America, and close to the same date. 




STONE MANSION AT MOUNT HOPE, N. J. 

Built by the Ford family before they erected the house in Morristown known as 
Washington's Headquarters. Here is the Elizabeth Mine, named for Elizabeth Free- 
man, of Woodbridge, which supplied the iron for the cannon and cannon-balls used 
by Washington's army. 

These facts are taken from "The Record" for March, 1880, pub- 
lished by the First Presbyterian Church of Morristown, of which 
Judge Ford's grandfather, Rev. Timothy Johnes, was pastor from 
1743 to 1794, covering the whole revolutionary period. He is 
said to have administered communion to Washington. His daugh- 
ter, Theodosia Ford, widowed early in 1777 with five young 
children, offered to Washington the hospitality of her home, and 
he made it his headquarters from December 1, 1779, to June, 



110 



1. 80. Among those who met at the Ford house at this period 
were Hamilton, Schuyler, Stirling, Greene, Knox, Harry Lee, 
John Stark, Israel Putnam, Anthony Wayne, Benedict Arnold, 
Steuben, Duportail. Pulaski, De Kalb, Kosciusko and Lafayette. 

THE FREEMAN IMMIGRANT ANCESTOR. 

Judge Freeman was sturdy in his assertion of the rights of 
the colonists against the encroachments of the royal governors, 
who, nevertheless, recognized his worth by long-continued ap- 
pointment, as one of the six judges of the court of common pleas 
of Middlesex county. He lived considerably past ninety years, 
and was buried in 1763 in the Presbyterian churchyard at Wood- 
bridge, where his tombstone stands amidst the graves of several 
generations of his descendants. 




TOMBSTONES OF JUDGE HENRY FREEMAN 

and HIS WIFE, ELIZABETH BONUE 

Presbyterian Churchyard, Wookbridge, New Jersev 

The inscription on this tombstone of Henry Freeman the 
Immigrant, stating that he died October 10, 1763. in the 94th 
year of his age, does not agree with the statement in Daniel 
Freeman's "Genealogy" that he was born August 7, 1672. This 
birth date Mr. Freeman copied from St. Sepulchre's Records in 
London, England, where he also found the birth date, July 12, 
1670, of his own ancestor, Edward Freeman, brother of Henry 
and Elizabeth. Perhaps some future student of family history 
will clear up this discrepancy. 



ill 



Daniel Freeman gives the birth date of Joseph Freeman (who 
was drowned in the Delaware River in 1682) as October 2, 1639, 
and his marriage to Ehzabeth Gosse (born 1636) on March 14, 
1666, in the parish of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, London. He 
carries the line back to William Freeman (father of Joseph), who 
was baptized January 14, 1592, at St. Mary at Hill; married 
Mary Orell November 3, 1638, and died at Betchworth in Surrey 
May 27, 1657; to William's father, Martyn Freeman, also of 
Betchworth, who married Elizabeth Lawrence, daughter of 
Matthew Lawrence, and grand-daughter of Sir Oliver Lawrence, 
Knight, who quartered his arms with those of the Washington 
family ; to Martyn's father, Edward Freeman, who married Eliza- 
beth Maush; to Edward's father, Henry Freeman, of Wallgrave, 
Northhamptonshire, who married Mary Wintershall; to Henry's 
father, Lawrence Freeman, who lived at Bentley and Wallgrave 
in the reign of Richard II. and married Anne Frebodye, daughter 
of Thomas Frebodye, of Northamptonshire ; and, finally, to Law- 
rence's father, John Freeman, mentioned above as living in 
Henry VI. 's time. Under date of November 27, 1662, Evelyn 
writes in his Diary : "Dined with old Sir Ralph Freeman, Master 
of the Mint." This was the eldest son of Martyn Freeman. Mr. 
Freeman relates many interesting incidents of family history and 
his book is beautifully illustrated in colors with the armorial 
bearings of the Isham family (the first John Freeman's wife 
being of that lineage) and those of the Frebodye, Wintershall, 
Lawrence and Washington families, as well as the variations and 
quarterings used by different members of the Freeman family. 
He also includes a still older brother of Edward, Henry and 
Elizabeth, named John Freeman, born in 1669, and married at 
St. Botolph's in London on October 3, 1693, to Mrs. Mary 
Dockra, of St. Helen's Parish. This John Freeman appears to 
have been in America at Woodbridge, N. J., in 1710, but subse- 
quently returned to England, where his second marriage in St. 
Paul's Cathedral is recorded on January 14, 1743, to Hester 
Coleman. 

In our home in East Orange we have an interesting 
souvenir of Judge Henry Freeman in his beautiful mahogany hall 
clock, which marks the hours to-day as deliberately and cheerily 
as it did in his lifetime. Above the dial is a painting on brass of 
a sea-fight in which the conquering frigate flies the Union Jack of 
Great Britain, while the other man-of-war shows the white flag 

112 



HENRY FREEMAN'S CLOCK 
Two Hundred Years Old 





TOMBSTONES OF HENRY FREEMAN, 2nd, 1717-1784 

and of the wife of Henry Freeman 3rd, who was the mother of Lieutenant 

Edgar Freeman, U. S. Navy. Presbyterian Churchyard, Woodbridge. 



of surrender. Engraved on a brass plate attached to the face of 
the dial is the name "Moses Ogden," presumably the maker of 
this venerable time-piece, which has been passed down through 
seven generations of Henry Freeman's descendants. 

Henry Freeman, 1717-1784, son of Judge Freeman, married 
Mary Read, whose brother, Rev. Israel Read, was graduated in 
the first class from Princeton College in 1748, with Richard 
Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Israel Read 
was the first regularly installed pastor of the Presbyterian church 
at Bound Brook ; subsequently was in charge of the church at 
New Brunswick, and for over thirty years was a trustee of 
Princeton College. 






v. 







FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF WOODBRIDGE, N. J. 

Built by Joel Freeman in 1803. Replaced the first church erected in 1675. The 
original large shingles and hand^wrought nails may still be seen on the outer walls. 
During 240 years this congregation has worshipped in only the two structures. 



114 



The next in line, Israel Freeman, named for his uncle, Rev. 
Israel Read, was born in 1742, and became a soldier in the 
revolution. He married Louisa Miller and settled at Pray Hill, 
near Richfield Springs, N. Y. We have a graceful pair of sugar- 
tongs which belonged to the wife of Israel Freeman, marked with 
her initials, "L. M." 

Israel Freeman's son, Joel Freeman, 1770-1835, in 1803 built 
the Presbyterian church still standing in Woodbridge. This was 
during the fifty-two-year pastorate of Rev. Azel Roe, the patriot 
preacher who was confined in the Sugar House prison in New 
York during the revolution. 

In the year 1800 Joel Freeman built the Freeman homestead, 
which also remains to this day. The adjoining home was that 
of the Harriott family, who then spelled the name Herriott, and 
whose tombstones likewise adjoin those of the Freeman family in 
the Presbyterian churchyard. The Harriotts are descendants of 
the family which gave Heriot's Hospital to Edinburgh in Scotland. 
Their ancestor was the brother of George Heriot, the philan- 
thropic goldsmith of James I., a familiar character to all readers 
of Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel." This good man left no children, 
and in memory of his wife, Alison Primrose, of the family of 
the earls of Roseberry, founded the famous school for the free 
education and up-bringing of Edinburgh youth. In Walter Scott's 
time the fund had increased to the extent that it then provided 
for 130 boys annually. He declared that "George Heriot left the 
most magnificent proofs of his benevolence and charity that the 
capital of Scotland has to display." 

April 2, 1801, Joel Freeman married Nancy McMinn, daugh- 
ter of Alexander McMinn, who came from the Isle of \\ nithorn, 
in Scotland, in 1774. I have his inventory of the books which he 
brought with him to America, dated New York, July 20, 1774; 
also a few of the volumes listed and a statement written on parch- 
ment, dated October 20, 1750, and signed by the town clerk of 
Irvine, in Scotland, declaring that William McMind (father of 
Alexander McMinn), merchant of Montserrat, in the West Indies, 
was on that day "Admitted and received Burgess and Gild Brother 
of the said Burgh, and the whole privileges, Libertys and Im- 
munitys thereof were Conferred upon him, in ample form, who 
gave his Oath of fidelity as the Custom is." Two years after his 
arrival in America Alexander McMinn was married to Rachel 
Campbell on May 5, 1776, by Rev. Azel Roe. She was the 



daughter of Dugald Campbell, a revolutionary soldier and son 
of Neil Campbell, whose father, John Campbell, 1659-1731, lies 
under the oldest tombstone in the graveyard at Metuchen, N. J. 
John's father, John Campbell, was one of the earliest proprietors 
of East Jersey and a member of the Assembly in 1686. His daugh- 
ter Ann married John Stevens, and from this union are descended 
the Stevens family of Castle Point, N. J. John Campbell came 
from Scotland not only to look after his own holdings, but also 
those of the Earl of Perth, for whom the town of Perth Amboy 
was named. 

OLD FREEMAN FURNITURE. 
When Rachel Campbell, the widow of A 1 exander McMinn, 
moved from the home of her brother, Neil Campbell, in Metuchen 
to live with her daughter, Nancy McMinn, the wife of Joel 
Freeman, in the house which he built in 1800, she brought with 
her two handsome mahogany chests of drawers with cupboards 
above. These have made only one other move since, of less than 
20 miles, to our home in East Orange, where they are prized 
along with several other pieces of furniture with which Joel 




JOEL FREEMAN'S 
WRITING DESK 

Built by himself 



Freeman and his wife set up housekeeping in their new home. 
These include a maple writing desk built by Joel Freeman himself, 
a plain mahogany parlor table with leaves, two round maple tables, 
one large and one small ; seven painted rush-bottom chairs, two 
cane-seated chairs, three straight-backed chairs, a set of five 
spindle-backed chairs with three rocking chairs to match, the 

116 




Bust by EMID YANDELL, Scu'ptor 

and reduced signature of Joel Francis Freeman, 1836' 
1810. A sketch of his life will be found in volume XV 
of the National Cyclopedia of American Biogrophy, 
pages 276 and 277. 



117 



brass andirons used in the parlor and the brass and steel andirons 
used in the big fireplace in the dining room. The mahogany 
table with elaborately carved legs belonged to Lieutenant Edgar 
Freeman, 1789-1871. His line of the family became extinct when 
his daughter, Gertrude Freeman, died in 1914. In her will she 
bequeathed to me her father's miniature and the tea service of 
Sheffield plate presented to him by his brother officers when he 
retired from the navy in 1828. A sketch of his life will be 
found on page 119. I make mention of these venerable household 
effects for the reason that I am now the only person living who 
knows the history of the o 1 d pieces. I wish the record of them 
preserved and I know of no better way to preserve it than to 
print it in this little volume. 




FRANCES MARIA ABBEY 

Widow of Joel Francis Freeman and donor of the Abbey- 
Memorial. From the statuette by Enid Yandell, sculptor. 
The donor and all of her four children were born in the 
Western Reserve of Connecticut in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Alexander Freeman, 1807-1839, son of Joel Freeman, mar- 
ried Hannah Maria Low, a member of the Dutch family on whose 
land Vassar College now stands, and a descendant of the Mott, 
Fort and Pell families. These were the parents of Joel Francis 
Freeman, 1836-1910, of East Orange, N. J., who married Frances 
Maria Abbey, daughter of Judge Seth Alden Abbey, and donor 
of the Abbey Memorial in Enfield. 



118 



Lieutenant Edgar Freeman, U* S, N. 

Lieutenant Edgar Freeman, 1789-1871, son of Israel Free- 
man's youngest brother, Henry Freeman, 3d, had an eventful 
career. In 1811, when twenty-two, he entered the United States 
Navy as a midshipman. The same year he was assigned to the 
"Hornet/'' under command of the famous Captain Lawrence. 
The following year he was transferred to the "Nautilus," which 
was the first American man-of-war captured by the British in 
the war of 1812. After a long chase by a squadron of four 




LIEUT. EDGAR FREEMAN, U. S. N. 

Who received a vote of thanks from Congress for heroism in the shipwreck of the 
"Chippewa." From the miniature by Frank Potter. 

frigates and a ship of the line, the "Nautilus" was taken on July 
16, 1812. Midshipman Freeman was made a prisoner of war and 
taken with the others to Halifax, but all were soon exchanged. 
He was then ordered to join Commodore Chauncey at Sackett's 
Harbor, N. Y., with a draft of men. In passing through the 
Highlands of the Hudson the vessel was struck by a squall and 
capsized, all hands being thrown overboard except five in the 

119 



forecastle, who were drowned. The inquest was held in New- 
burgh, and young Freeman then proceeded to Sackett's Harbor 
with the balance of the draft. He took part in the capture of 
Little York (now Toronto), and was in other engagements on 
Lake Ontario until the end of the war. 

Among his mates while a midshipman was a lad of distin- 
guished Spanish ancestry, whose father, like Lafayette, had 
volunteered in the cause of American independence, and is said to 
have saved the life of Washington at the battle of Cowpens. 
The boy was twelve years younger than Midshipman Freeman, 
who used to write his letters home for him. This lad became the 
celebrated Admiral Farragut of the Civil War, of whom Joseph 
H. Choate said at the unveiling of his statue by St. Gaudens in 
Madison Square, New York, that "it was reserved for Farragut, 
as he was bearing down upon the death-dealing batteries of the 
rebels at Mobile, to hoist nothing less than himself into the rigging 
of his flagship, as the living signal of duty done, that the world 
might see that what England had only expected America had 
fully realized, and that every man, from the rear-admiral down, 
was faithful. Farragut learned from his cradle that the first and 
last duty of an American is to his country; that to live for her 
is honor, and to die for her is glory." 

I have a manuscript of Lieutenant Freeman in which he 
narrates the chief events of his naval career. He particularly 
describes the cruise of the "Independence" in the Mediterranean 
after the war of 1812. At Genoa Commodore Bainbridge and the 
other officers entertained Lord Byron, who showed much gratifi- 
cation on finding many copies of his poems in the ship's cabin. 
At Malaga they were "most sumptuously entertained by our most 
worthy consul, Mr. Kirkpatrick, his amiable lady and two accom- 
plished daughters, one of them now the mother of Eugenie, the 
present Empress of France." I have also his commission as 
lieutenant, received while master of the frigate "Congress." It 
is signed by President Monroe and dated March 5, 1817. 

When the "Chippewa" was wrecked on a sunken rock in the 
Coycos Islands, in the Bahamas, in 1817, Lieutenant Freeman, 
in the darkness of night, safely landed all his crew on a desert 
island, three miles to the south. They were without food or water. 
Commodore Reed proposed that the lieutenant return for pro- 
visions, if he could get men to volunteer. He could get but five to 
go. They boarded the wreck in a fearful sea and secured sufficient 

120 



food and water to keep all alive until they were rescued and taken 
to Turk's Island. In this undertaking Lieutenant Freeman was 
so severely injured that he had to remain for three months with 
the governor of the island before he was sufficiently recovered to 
be removed. For the injuries received and meritorious conduct 
he received a vote of thanks from Congress and a pension for life. 

His next service was on the "Saranac," sent to break up the 
slave trade. Seven slavers were captured. After this the "Sara- 
nac" touched at Fernandina, then a piratical rendezvous, captured 
the fort with the assistance of Colonel Bankhard's troops from 
Point Piter, up the St. Mary's river, and left the colonel in charge. 
After a cruise of eighteen months the "Saranac" returned to New 
York, and Lieutenant Freeman was assigned to duty under Com- 
modore Deacon on Lake Erie. While in charge of the navy yard 
at Erie he and his fellow officers entertained Commodore Perry 
and General Lafayette. 

Edgar Freeman retired from the navy in 1828 and returned 
to his birthplace, Woodbridge, N. J., and for three successive 
terms of five years each was appointed county judge of Middlesex 
county. I was invited to represent his service in the war of 1812 
in the Veteran Corps of Artillery, which is the oldest military 
organization in New York State, with a membership based on 
the services of ancestors like the Society of the Cincinnati. 

A NOTE OF EXPLANATION. 

To the casual reader the multitude of dates and minor 
details included in this pamphlet may appear trivial and tiresome ; 
some may think the Enfield Memorial overladen with inscriptions. 
On the memorial have been recorded as many material facts as 
possible of local and family history; in the pamphlet I have 
endeavored once and for all to gather in permanent form for the 
benefit of the families mentioned in the inscriptions and for. their 
descendants such additional facts of their ancestry as I have been 
able to collect during my lifetime. 



12! 



Connecticut's Western Reserve in Ohio 

Personal Recollections of Cleveland Celebrities 

A remarkable group of men and women lived in the neighbor- 
hood of my childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio. Two doors above 
us in Prospect street lived the parents of Mark Hanna, in a house 
shaded by two huge horsechestnut trees typical of the Buckeye 
State. Next door, on the other side, lived Mr. Bragg, who was 
a school principal and later became the head of the school-book 
trust in Cincinnati. Later the same house was occupied by the 
head of the Cleveland public library and his son, William H. 
Beardsley, now president of the Florida East Coast Railway 
Company, the great Flagler system built over the Florida Keys. 
Around the corner in Cheshire street lived William A. Rockefeller 
and his sons, John D. and William Rockefeller. 

One block away, in Euclid avenue, lived U. S. Senator Henry 
B. Payne, whose wife was a daughter of Nathan Perry, a 
pioneer settler of Cleveland. Next to the Payne house is the 
Perry homestead, a charming old house, with some of the 
original wallpaper still carefully preserved on its walls. In my 
boyhood days the wide fields adjoining were known as Perry's 
pasture and were the favorite playground of the boys of the 
neighborhood. Later the famous mayor of Cleveland, Tom John- 
son, lived in a house built on a part of this pasture lot. Senator 
Payne's son, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne, served with distinc- 
tion in the civil war, and was later treasurer of the Standard Oil 
Company, in which office my father was his successor. My 
father afterward became treasurer of the Standard Oil Trust, 
which was devised by S. C. T. Dodd, known as "The Father of 
Trusts," who was a very successful lawyer and witty after- 
dinner speaker. When, in 1889, my father retired from the 
treasurership of the trust to become chairman of the board of 
the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, he was succeeded by 
William T. Wardwell, at one time the Prohibition candidate for 
President of the United States. Senator Payne's daughter, Flora 
Payne, married William C. Whitney, secretary of the navy under 
President Cleveland, and, became the social leader of that admin- 
istration. 

Not far from the home of Senator Payne lived Colonel John 
Hay, who had been private secretary to President Lincoln, was 
later ambassador to England, and finally secretary of state, 

J22 



negotiating the "open door" policy with China. He was credited 
in Cleveland with the authorship of the popular novel, "Bread 
Winners," published anonymously, with the scene obviously laid 
in the vicinity of Colonel Hay's home. In his keen instinct for 
character he was a diviner of men, their greatness and meanness, 
and scented a villain afar off, no matter how highly placed. For 
Napoleon III. he conceived an instant disgust, but his supreme 
aversion was the present German Kaiser. In 1900 he wrote to 
his closest friend : "At least we are spared the infamy of an 
alliance with Germany. 1 would rather, I think, be the dupe of 
China than the chum of the Kaiser." 

Next door to John Hay lived his father-in-law, Amasa Stone, 
who caused the removal of the Western Reserve University from 
Hudson to Cleveland, and endowed and named its classical 
department Adelbert College, in memory of his son, for whom 
Colonel Hay's son, Adelbert Hay, was also named. Although the 
Case School of Applied Science, established by my uncle, Henry 
G. Abbey, as sole trustee of the late Leonard Case, has no legal 
connection with Western Reserve University, it is practically the 
scientific department of the university, just as Adelbert College 
is the classical department. 

The eldest daughter of Seth Alden Abbey was Hannah W r ard 
Abbey, who, in 1848, married John Ingersoll, member of a 
pioneer family of the Western Reserve in Ohio. In May, 1850, 
he went by way of the Isthmus to California, where he met his 
brother-in-law, Henry Gilbert Abbey, who had preceded him in the 
rush of 1849. I remember my uncle's mother very well. She 
was Polly Perry, of the town of Lee, in Massachusetts, and mar- 
ried Nathan Ingersoll, January 17, 1812. They soon migrated to 
Ohio, going by way of Albany and the Mohawk Valley. The 
bride rode horseback most of the journey, which lasted six 
weeks. 

Polly Perry Ingersoll had a keen intellect and active mind. 
She lived to be ninety, and I have heard her tell how, one after- 
noon in September, when they had been settled for about a year 
on their farm on the heights above Cleveland, they heard con- 
tinuous thunder under a cloudless sky, which later proved to be the 
heavy cannonading of the battle of Lake Erie, in which her 
kinsman, Oliver Hazard Perry, won his famous victory. 

Near neighbors of the Hay and Stone families were the 
Boardman family, of which Miss Mabel T. Boardman is now the 

123 



head of the American Red Cross Society. One of my mother's 
schoolmates in Cleveland was Constance Fenimore Woolson, the 
novelist and great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper. While 
attending the Cleveland high school I remember that Professor 
Hotze, the teacher of physics, never tired of telling us about his 
favorite pupil, Charles F. Brush, who, while still a student, was 
so proficient that the professor placed him in charge of the 
chemical and physical laboratory of the high school. Mr. Brush 
built himself a fine home in Euclid avenue. 

When John Hay retired as ambassador to Great Britain the 
embassy continued to be presided over by a Cleveland woman, 
for the wife of Joseph H. Choate is the daughter of Frederick A. 
Sterling and the sister of Dr. Elisha Sterling. Dr. Sterling was 
one of the Case "Arkites" and lives on the "Nabob," or north 
side of Euclid avenue. The south side, with its more modest 
homes and less extensive lawns, was called the "Bob" side 
in the days of my boyhood. A Cleveland boy who lived in 
Prospect street, on the block above our home, went to West 
Point, and is now General Clarence R. Edwards, and in 
command of the troops stationed on the Panama Canal. I 
also vividly recall a little girl in our Sunday school at the 
Second Presbyterian church. She had black eyes and very blonde 
hair, and her beauty later caused a furore in Europe. Edward 
VII., then Prince of Wales, described her as "the girl with the 
gipsy eyes and angel hair." This was Jennie Chamberlain, now 
Lady Naylor-Leland, in whose house in London Whistler painted 
his famous "Peacock Room." 

A chiel's amang ye takin' notes, 
An' faith he'll prent it ! 

Robert Burns. 



NOTE 
The reader has doubtless noted the quotations which make a considerable part 
of this little volume. They form quite a complete collection of the oratory and 
eloquence which have inspired our national life from pre-revolutionary times 
down to the present day. 



124 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

In concluding I should be guilty of injustice if I did not 
acknowledge my debt to that most painstaking, reliable and 
untiring of genealogists, Mr. James Allen Kibbe, of Warehouse 
Point, Connecticut, the compiler of "The History of Enfield," 
whose help has guided my researches into their most interesting, 
remote and, to me, valuable discoveries. 

I wish to express my appreciation of the very practical and 
efficient assistance of Air. Allen B. Hathaway, chairman of the 
First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield, and the courtesy and 
helpfulness of the Selectmen of the town of Enfield ; also my 
indebtedness to Mr. Normand F. Allen, of Hartford; to Mr. 
Franklin J. Sheldon, of Enfield, and to Mrs. William A. Abbe, 
president of the Historical Society of Enfield, all of whom have 
been helpful and sympathetic. 

Nor can I close without a word of appreciation to Mr. Will- 
iam M. Kendall for the beautiful classical design of the seats, 
which was his conception ; to Mr. Ernest F. Lewis for his patient 
study and artistic execution of the drawings, especially those for 
the seals ; in fact, to all connected with the firm of McKim, Mead 
& W r hite, especially mentioning Mr. Leland S. Sudlow, the gen- 
eral superintendent, and Mr. John Vegezzi, the draughtsman who 
designed the lettering; to Donnelly & Ricci, who modeled the 
pedestal, seats and seals, and to Mr. Ulysses Ricci, the sculptor 
of the seals ; to Mr. V. David Newman, of Romulus, N. Y., 
to whom I am indebted for many of the photographs which illus- 
trate this pamphlet, including those of the twenty seals ; and to 
Mr. Edwin Shuttleworth, who contracted for all the marble and 
other material and has executed the work with efficiency and 
dispatch. The marble used is from the Ross quarry in Tennessee, 
being the same stone as that used in the Morgan library in New 
York. Mr. Fry's noble figure of Captain Abbey needs no enco- 
mium from me. It speaks for itself in beauty, dignity and 
strength. 

I do not wish the Abbey Memorial to share the fate of the 
Perry Monument in my native city of Cleveland. The beautiful 
white marble statue of Commodore Perry, with its supporting 
figures of sailor boys, was originally erected in the middle of the 
Public Square. On the introduction of electric lighting the Perry 
Monument was moved to the centre of one of the quarter sections 

125 



of the square to make place for a gigantic pole. Later, the second 
location was sought for a memorial to the women of the Civil 
War, and Commodore Perry was again moved, this time to a 
suburban park on the lake shore. I consulted my long-time 
friend, Hon. Julian A. Gregory, Mayor of East Orange, 191 1- 
1915, as to preventing similar migrations on the part of the statue 
of Captain Abbey. Mr. Gregory made an exhaustive search of 
the statutes of the State of Connecticut, in which is his summer 
home at Wilton in Fairfield County. The result of his labors was 
that, at a town meeting held in the venerable building* around 
whose walls Thomas Abbey beat his drum, it was unanimously 
voted by the people of Enfield on November 11, 1915, to give for 
the Abbey Memorial in perpetuity the site on Enfield Green, 
where the present town hall stood when it was Enfield's meeting 
house. 

Julian Arthur Gregory is the man who for years fought and 
exposed the Democratic boss of New Jersey, United States 
Senator James Smith, and by so doing prepared the way for his 
final overthrow by Woodrow Wilson when Governor of New 
Jersey. He is the only Democrat who was ever elected Mayor 
of East Orange, normally a Republican stronghold. He gave 
such an absolutely non-partisan and just administration of the 
city's affairs that 100 members of the Republican Club of East 
Orange united in a petition to this Democrat to stand for a second 
term and he was re-elected by an overwhelming majority. With 
great generosity Mr. Gregory donated his legal services in secur- 
ing the site of the Abbey Memorial. 



* An error. This town meeting was held in the Thompsonville sec- 
tion of Enfield. Mr. Hathaway tells me that for some years the old 
town hall has been abandoned for town meetings on account of its dis- 
tance from the present center of population. I indulge the hope that, the 
citizens of Enfield will unite to preserve this historic building as a 
memorial of olden times. 

Mr. T. W. Miller, who is superintending the erection of the memorial, 
writes that in excavating for the foundation a circular brownstone wall 
was uncovered. Mr. J, Warren Johnson tells me that this was the well 
of the Town Pump, which stood a few feet north of the old meeting 
house. It seems clear, therefore, that the memorial is located quite close 
to the site of the church around which Captain Abbey beat the drum. 



126 



Certified Copy of Grant of the Site for the Abbey 
Memorial by the People of Enfield 

The following is a certified copy of action taken at the Town 
Meeting November 11th, 1915. in connection with Article Xo. 1 
in the warning : 

Art. 1. The fo 1 lowing letter and resolution was presented 
by Allen B. Hathaway and William J. Mulligan moved its adop- 
tion : 

Letter : 

September 24th, 1915. 
Honorable Selectmen, 

Enfield, Conn. 
Gentlemen : 

As you are undoubtedly aware, I am desirous of erecting a 
monument to Capt. Thomas Abbey, a hero of the Revolutionary 
War, and in connection with it a memorial to his ancestors and 
descendants, and of giving this monument and memorial, upon 
its completion, to the town of Enfield. I have had plans and 
specfficationus drawn, and am now preparing to sign the con- 
tracts for the completion of this work. Before signing the 
contracts, calling for an expenditure of several thousand dollars, 
I should like to be protected to the extent of knowing that the 
monument will be acceptable to the citizens of Enfield, and that 
the work may proceed to completion without interruption. 

I am advised that the only safe course for me to pursue is 
to obtain permission to erect the monument, and the acceptance 
of my offer by action taken at a Town meeting. After consulta- 
tion with a number of prominent citizens of Enfield, the site 
recommended to me is upon the green, directly in front of the 
Congregational Church, and half way between the highway and 
the entrance to the Church. 

It is my further intention to give to the Congregational 
Church of Enfield, a sum of money sufficient to have the income 
therefrom maintain, in good condition and repair, the monument 
and memorial, together with the ground immediately surround- 
ing it. 

It will require, I am informed, about fourteen months from 
the signing of the contract, for the sculptor to complete the 
monument. I am therefore desirous of ascertaining whether, if 

127 



my plan is agreeable to you, a town meeting can be called, at 
which action may be taken approving of my offer, and authorizing 
the erection and maintenance in perpetuity, of the statue and 
memorial as proposed. 

Very respectfuly yours, 

ALDEN FREEMAN. 

In presence of 
Vern D. Newman 
witness. 

Resolution : 

Whereas, Mr. Alden Freeman of the City of East Orange, 
in the State of New Jersey, has offered to give to the Town of 
Enfield, a statue of Captain Thomas Abbey, a former resident of 
said Town, together with a base therefor, and to construct said 
base and erect said statue thereon within the highway limits upon 
the east side of the travelled path immediately in front of the 
building of the First Ecclesiastical Society on Enfield Street, all 
without expense to the town, and to give said First Ecclesiastical 
Society a sum of money to be held as a permanent fund, the 
income thereof to be applied to the care and maintenance of said 
statue and base, which offer is set forth in a letter from said 
Alden Freeman, dated September 24, 1915, and addressed to the 
Selectmen of the Town, which letter has this day been read to 
the voters of the Town in Town meeting duly assembled ; and 

Whereas, Said First Ecclesiastical Society, acting by its 
Society's Committee, thereunto duly authorized, has formal 1 y 
consented to the location of said statue as hereinbefore described, 
and to hold and invest said fund and use the income thereof for 
the purposes stated; and 

Whereas, A plan of said proposed statue and its base has 
been submitted to the voters of the Town at said Town meeting; 

Now, THEREFORE, It is voted that said offer be, and the same 
hereby is accepted, and that upon the completion of said statue, 
the First Selectman of the Town be authorized to accept the 
same in the name of, and on behalf of the citizens of the Town ; 
and that the said Alden Freeman, and his representatives, agents 
and contractors be, and they hereby are authorized to proceed 
with the erection of said statue, together with the base or pedestal 
and seats or benches surrounding the same, within the highway 
limits, upon the east side of the travelled path, immediately in 

128 




AT WORK ON THE ABBEY MEMORIAL 

In the yard of the Edwin Shuttleworth Co., Long Island City, N. Y. 



front of the building of the First Ecclesiastical Society, on Enfield 
Street ; and to perform all the work necessary to be done in con- 
nection with the erection and completion thereof, without any let, 
hindrance, obstruction or delay on the part of the citizens and 
voters of the town of Enfield, or their representatives ; and that 
said statue when completed, shall not be destroyed or removed, 
but shall always remain upon the site upon which it is erected, and 
so long as it is maintained, repaired and kept in good condition. 

Being put to vote, Resolution was Adopted. 
Attest : A true copy of record. 

J. HAMILTON POTTER, 

Town Clerk. 

WHAT HAS AMERICA DONE FOR MANKIND? 

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into exis- 
tence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable 
rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of gov- 
ernment. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admis- 
sion among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held 
forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of 
generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, 
though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language 
of equal liberty, equal justice and equal rights. She has, in the 
lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, re- 
spected the independence of other nations, while asserting and 
maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in 
the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for 
principles to which she clings as to the last vital drop that visits 
the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come 
all the contests of that Aceldama, the European world, will be 
contests between inveterate power and emerging right. Wherever 
the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be 
unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers 
be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. 
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. 
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well 
knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, 
were they even the banners of foreign independence, the funda- 
mental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty 
to force. She might become the dictatress of the world; she 
would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit. 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, JULY 4, 1821. 

130 



THE DRUM OF LEXINGTON. 
(Reflections for Patriots' Day.) 

But yesterday I saw the historic drum 

Which William Dimon beat 
Upon that fateful far-off April morn 

Along each winding street, 
And on the memorable Green of Lexington, 

Bidding the patriots come 
And face the banded hosts of tyranny. 

At the reveille was a nation born, 
Pledged to the sacred rights of Liberty. 

Xow, 'neath the rays of the same vernal sun. 

Peace broods about the Green, 
But it remembers yet, 

Girdled with stately elms memorial, 
The hurtle of the deadly musket ball, 

And how its sod was wet 
With sacrificial blood — the whole sad, ruthless scene. 

Would that the drum of Lexington again 

Might sound its summoning call, 
Sound from the rocky coasts of Maine, 

Where Agimenticus, inland, fronts the seas 
To where the long trades sweep and swell and fall 

Round the Floridian keys ! 
Aye, sound from Puget, on which Shasta's crown 

Majestically looks down, 
E'en to the borders of that stricken land 

Beyond the brown coils of the Rio Grande ! 



131 



Have we grown sleek with sloth? q- 

Sloughed the old virile spirit, taken on 
Abasement for a garment? Are we loth 

To rouse us, and to don 
The rapt heroic valor once again 

That girdled us when men indeed were men? 
Caution and doubt and fear seem subtly crept 

Upon us, and inept, 
We stumble, falter, palter, and we need 

Not the smooth word, but the swift searching deed. 
If bleed we must, then rather let us bleed 

Than sit inglorious, rich in all the things 
Save those which honor brings ! 

Now every slope of our dear land is fair 

Beneath the azure of the April air ; 
The impatient loam is ready for the seed, 

But we ? Take heed, take heed, 
My brothers ! And O you, brave wraith 

Of dauntlessness and faith, 
You, William Dimon, come ! 

Come, sound the old reveille on your drum, 
The drum of Lexington, 

And make us all, in steadfast purpose, one ! 

Clinton Scollard. 
New York Sun, April 19, 1916. 



132 



AMERICA'S DEBT TO THE MEMORY OF WASHINGTON 
AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 

Americans, this God who raised up Washington and gave 
you liberty exacts from you the duty of cherishing it with a 
zeal according to knowledge. Never sully by apathy or outrage 
your fair inheritance. Risk not for one moment on visionary 
theories the solid blessings of your lot. To you particularly, O 
youth of America, applies the solemn charge. In all the perils 
of your country, remember Washington. The freedom of reason 
and of right has been handed down to you on the point of the 




THE MATTHEW G. ANDERSON HOUSE 

In Enfield Street 
Washington passed a night in this house, which was built in 1708. 



hero's sword. Guard with veneration the sacred deposit. The 
curse of ages will rest upon you, O youth of America, if ever 
you surrender to foreign ambition or domestic lawlessness the 
precious liberties for which Washington fought and your fathers 
bled. 1 cannot part with you, fellow citizens, without urging the 
long remembrance of our present assembly. This day we wipe 
away the reproach of republics, that they know not how to be 
grateful. In your treatment of living patriots recall your love 
and your regret of Washington.— John Mitchell Mason's funeral 
oration on Washington, February 22, 1800. 

133 



WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR. 

[Words of President Wilson on His Preparedness Tour.] 

America was born into the world to do mankind's service, 
and no man is an American in whom the desire to do mankind's 
service does not take precedence over the desire to serve himself. 
If I believed that the might of America was any threat to any 
free man in the world I would wish America to be weak. But 
I believe that the might of America is the might of righteous 
purpose and of a sincere love of mankind. — Pittsburg, January 
28, 1916. 

Did you ever stop to reflect just what it is that America 
stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is 
for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, 
her assistance, her encouragement, have thrilled two continents 
in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built 
up human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands, there- 
fore, as an example of independence, as an example of free 
institutions, and as an example of disinterested international 
action in the main tenets of justice. — Pittsburg, January 28, 1916. 

Why is it that each nation turns to us with the instinctive 
feeling that if anything touches humanity it touches us? Because 
it knows that ever since we were born as a nation we have 
undertaken to be the champions of humanity and of the rights 
of man. Without that ideal there would be nothing that would 
distinguish America from her predecessors in the history of 
nations. Why is it that men that love liberty have crowded to 
these shores ? Why is it that we greet them as they enter the great 
harbor of New York with that majestic Statue of Liberty holding 
up a torch, whose visionary beams are supposed to spread abroad 
over the waters of the world, and to say to all men: "Come to 
America, where mankind is free and where we love all the works 
of righteousness and of peace"? — Cleveland, January 29, 1916. 



m 



Lincoln on Free Speech 



I FEAR YOU DO NOT FULLY COMPREHEND THE 
DANGER OF ABRIDGING THE LIBERTIES OF THE 
PEOPLE. A GOVERNMENT HAD BETTER GO TO THE 
VERY EXTREME OF TOLERATION THAN TO DO 
AUGHT THAT COULD BE CONSTRUED INTO AN 
INTERFERENCE WITH OR TO JEOPARDIZE IN ANY 
DEGREE THE COMMON RIGHTS OF THE CITIZEN. 

This was President Lincoln's answer to the friends who 
besought him to suppress the Chicago Times during the Civil 
War. 



135 



DEDICATION 



OF THE 



ABBEY MEMORIAL 



ON 



ENFIELD GREEN 



Saturday Afternoon, November 4, 1916 



AT TWO O'CLOCK 



THE ENFIELD COMMITTEES. 

Allen B. Hathaway, Chairman 

SELECTMEN OF ENFIELD. 

Albert J. Epstein Robert Hawthorne 

John Savage 
J. Hamilton Potter, Town Clerk 

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF ENFIELD. 

J. Warren Johnson Deacon Herbert E. Vail 

Deacon Harlan P. Parsons Mrs. Frank H. Abbe 

Deacon Robert F. King Mrs. William K. Henry 

Mrs. David C. Reid 

THOMPSONVILLE COMMITTEE. 

Lyman A. Upson Arthur R. Leete 

Alvin D. Higgins William Calderwood 

Senator Thomas G. Alcorn William J. Hughes 

William H. Leete W. J. Liberty 

HAZARDVILLE COMMITTEE. 

Andrew Gordon H. Stephen Bridge 

George J. Gordon Francis P. Leary 

Jacob Thorne 
wallup and weymouth. 
Levi P. Abbe Seth Phelps 

the shakers. 
Elder Shepperd 

KING STREET. 

James D. Price Charles T. Abbe 

Harry E. Allen 
decoration committee. 
Normand F. Allen Wtll Sexton 

William A. Abbe Will Allen 

the press. 
William J. Hughes Harvey Brainard 

AUTOMOBILE PARKING AND TRAFFIC. 

Ernest W. Woodward W. J. Connors 

Albert F. Baker P. J. Rogers 

DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

Mrs. Normand F. Allen Mrs. Allen B. Hathaway 

OLD TOWN HALL COMMITTEE. 

Major Franklin J. Sheldon Ernest W. Woodward 

139 



-^f 




ENFIELD CHURCH 
Photographed by de Witt C. Ward 



USHERS AT ENFIELD CHURCH. 

Warren B. Johnson Rollin F. Parsons 

Leroy L. Day Charles C. Chapin 

Harry E. Allen Edward Kingsbury 

reception committee. 
James Aleen Kibbe R. Ensign Abbe 

Normand F. Allen William A. Abbe 

Frank H. Abbe George T. Mathewson 

Levi P. Abbe Harry S. Woodward 

INVOCATION. 
By Rev. David C. Reid, Pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of Enfield. 
"Almighty God, leather of all mercies, we, Thine unworthy 
servants, do give Thee most humble and hearty thanks for all 
Thy goodness and loving kindness to us and to all men. We 
bless Thee for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of 
life, but above all for Thine inestimable love in the redemption 
of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, 
and for the hope of g 1 ory. And we beseech Thee give us that 
due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly 
thankful, and that we may show forth Thy praise not only with 
our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to Thy service 
and by walking before Thee in righteousness and holiness all our 
days ; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with Thee and 
the Ho 1 y Spirit, be all honor and glory, world without end. 
Amen." 

And we thank Thee, Almighty God, Father of all nations, 
that Thou didst early plant the tree of liberty in this land of ours, 
and didst cause it to grow and become strong and spread its 
branches abroad to bear fruit for the healing of all nations. We 
thank Thee that in all the course and strugg 1 es of this nation's 
history, Thou hast been our Leader ; and that when our republic 
was in the throes of national birth, and when the minds of men 
were uncertain and their hearts filled with ferr; when they knew 
not which side to take, or which way to go, then Thou didst 
cause the people to fix their eyes on the star of liberty, union and 
democracy, and led by that star, to find the land of a free, a 
united and an enlightened people. 

For these and other national blessings we render Thee hearty 
thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

141 



And Heavenly Father, thou God of the patriots, as we pro- 
ceed in the ceremonies of this hour, as we unveil this monument 
placed here to commemorate the deeds of one of our ancestors 
who helped here and elsewhere to give this nation a birth in 
liberty ; as we contemplate the names of his descendants, who 
have distinguished themselves by important services, we thank 
Thee not only for the patriotism of the father and the mother of 
revolutionary times, but also that the patriotism and the virtues 
of the father and the mother have descended to their sons and 
daughters even unto the third and the fourth generations ; and 
have been fruitful in the many parts of this land wherever provi- 
dence has led them to make their home. 

And we thank Thee for all the patriots of all that early time, 
and for all their descendants who have labored to make this a 
land of liberty and light and of united effort for the highest wel- 
fare of all the people. 

And Thou who art the God of the present and of the future 
years, as we recall the patriotism of past generations, we offer 
a humble petition for ourselves and for the years to come. Grant, 
oh God, that we may emulate the patriotism and the virtues of 
our ancestors ; grant that we may be able still to keep our eyes 
fixed upon the star that guided our fathers, — the star of liberty 
and union, which are still "one and inseparable, now and for- 
ever." 

And do Thou give us the vision of true citizens and true 
statesmen, that we may be able to see the agents that work for 
liberty and union ami see also those that do not. And grant that 
we may be able ever to choose and cherish the one as we would the 
joys of heaven, and shun and oppose the other as we would the 
woes of hell. 

And we pray for all nations of the earth. And as our orig- 
inal thirteen co 1 onies, by following the star of liberty and union, 
grew into a united, mighty people with peace established within 
their borders, so may all nations of the earth learn together to 
follow that same star of hope. And grant that they may follow 
that star until they shall arrive at true international liberty, with 
a true international union in a League of Peace embracing all 
nations of the earth, which shall work together for the common 
international good. 

And so may the words spoken by prophets of old be fulfi 1 led, 
when the whole earth shall be filled with prosperity and gladness 
and the desert places shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. 

142 



And to this end, oh Thou Father of love, bring us all, as 
individuals, communities and nations, under the dominion of the 
law of Christ, which is the law of love. Give us then that love 
which will do no wrong to one's neighbor, which will unite all 
hearts and all nations as one and will bring in everywhere "peace 
on earth and good will among men." Amen. 

SOLO— "AMERICA." 

By Mme. Florence Mulford of the Metropolitan Opera Company, 
New York, accompanied by Gerald Maas on the 'Cello. 

HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 
By J. Warren Johnson, Esq., of Enfield. 

It is doubted by some that the news of the battle of Lex- 
ington could have reached Enfield on Thursday afternoon, April 
20, 1775. On Wednesday, April 19, 1775, the first blood of the 
American Revolution was shed at Lexington, Mass. The news 
reached Enfield on the afternoon of April 20, 1775. Isaac Kibbe 
kept the tavern near the church, and as soon as the messenger 
arrived, Kibbe procured a drum and Thomas Abbe beat the long 
roll about the church. It was then the custom, which was kept 
up until within the memory of the speaker, that all the churches 
held mid-week meetings at the church on Thursday afternoon 
of each week, in which a lecture was given by the pastor. The 
meeting being held on Thursday afternoon, April 20, 1775, was 
broken up by Thomas Abbe's drumming, and without the usual 
decorum the congregation rushed out to learn the cause of the 
uproar. They dispersed to their homes and that night every 
person in Enfield knew about the fight at Lexington. The next 
morning seventy-five of the Minute Men of Enfield marched 
for Boston, each with his flint-lock musket and powder horn. 
Not all of the seventy-five reached Boston, but Thomas Abbe did. 
W T e have all their names, and I will caU "The Long Roll" of 
the Minute Men of Enfield on April 20, 1775 : 

Nathaniel Terry, Major Daniel Kingsbury 

Richard Abbe, Lieutenant Barzilia.Markham 

John Simons, Captain Corporals 

Joseph Booth, Ensign David Chandler 

Skrgkants Ehphalet Killam 

Samuel Jones Elihu Geer 

Jonathan Bush John Simons, 2nd 

143 



Privates 



Nathaniel Chandler 
Samuel Pease 
Thomas Hale 
Jacob Terry, Jr. 
John Pease, 2nd 
Samuel Hale 
James Green 
Seth Hall 
Peter Pero 
Thomas Abbe 
Jabez Parsons 
Daniel Prior 
John Abbe 
Joseph Gleason 
Isaac Pease 
Oliver Bush 
Moses Bush 
Moses Warner 
Edmund Bement 
John McLester 
Nathan Markham 
Daniel Burbank 
Hezekiah Parsons 
Samuel Hemingway 
John Chandler 
Benjamin Herrington 
Thomas Pease 
Solomon Gaines 
Richard Fairman • 
John Crosby 
Levi French 
John Parsons 



Eliphalet Collins 
Josiah Blakesley 
Asahel Parsons 
Aaron Pease, Jr. 
Ebenezer M. Gregory 
David Phelps, Jr. 
Asa Meacham 
Isaac Markham 
Shadrach Terry 
Christopher Marshall 
Samuel Kingsbury 
Henry Booth 
Benajah Griswold 
Nathaniel Lamb 
Aaron Waters 
Zebulun Pease 
Titus Fairman 
Ambrose Markham 
Jacob Fairman 
Jonathan Allen 
John Hall 
John Morrison 
Jacob Shepard 
Ebenezer Parsons 
Peter Parsons 
Gideon Pease 
Abram Whipple 
James Pease 
Peter Reynolds 
Daniel Terry 
Hezekiah Parsons 



Some of the above named never reached Boston. The Red 
Coats having retreated, many of them returned home. Hezekiah 
Parsons, Captain and Thomas Abbe and Barzilia Markham, Lieu- 
tenants, and thirty-two others marched on and remained in the 
vicinity of Boston until winter. 

We have also the names of fourteen Enfie 1 d men who lost 
their lives in the Revolutionary War : 

Freegrace Bi 1 lings Lieutenant Noah Phelps 



144 



Edward Collins Levi Terry 

John Allen Oliver Pease 

Jedediah Meacham Joseph Hall 

Benjamin Gains Nathaniel Pease 

Isaac French George Pease 

Oliver Parsons Farnum 

Both of these lists were compiled by my father, Aholiab 
Johnson, for the Centennial Exercises, held in Enfield on July 4, 
1876. Both he and I were speakers on that occasion and the lists 
were printed in an Historical Sketch of the Town of EnfieM 
prepared by him. Mr. Freeman says that my father's enthusiasm 
inspired Benjamin Taylor to write "The Captain's Drum," and 
that except for Aholiab Johnson's efforts to keep the tradition 
alive, Mr. Taylor's inspiring poem would never have been written, 
nor would this noble statue have been erected. 

For a long time previous to the Lexington fight the people 
of America had expected such a clash, in fact longed for it, and 
were prepared for it. Every town within a hundred miles of 
Boston had its Minute Men ready with arms and ammunition 
to start at once, and every town had its horse and rider ready 
to carry the news to the next town. Ten miles an hour could 
easily be made by a galloping horse, and Enfield could have been 
reached within twenty-four hours. 

Hezekiah Sheldon, who did much work many years ago for 
the preservation of Suffield's local history, says in his little book 
that the Suffield Minute Men marched to Springfield on the even- 
ing of April 20th, and spent the night in Springfield and were 
there entertained by the town of Springfield, and an account of 
it made on the treasurer's book, which fixes the date. 

Surely a messenger may have arrived in Enfield on that 
Thursday afternoon as quickly as he could have arrived in 
Suffield, and so Thomas Abbe may have beaten his drum about 
the church that afternoon. But, alas, there is no record proof 
of the fact of the beating of the drum on that afternoon, and 
the story rests wholly upon tradition. Mr. Freeman tells me 
that Rev. Benjamin F. Taylor, the writer of the beautiful poem, 
credited Aholiab Johnson, my father, with the information 
about the beating of the drum by Captain Abbe, on which the 
famous poem first published in the Atlantic Monthly in May, 
1878, was founded. Aholiab Johnson, as a lawyer, settled in 
Enfield in 1840 and died in 1893 at the age of 94 years. For 

145 



many years he was town clerk of the town and judge of the 
Probate Court for the District of Enfield, and probably knew 
every man in town, and doubtless talked with many persons 
who heard the drumming, and thus got the facts which he 
related at first hand. Besides this, the notable story has been 
a tradition on the tongues of all the older people of the town 
for several generations past. No event founded on tradition 
relating to the history of Enfield has a better foundation. We 
have as good a right to believe this story as we have to believe 
many a story spread on the records in writing. A man can 
tell a lie with his pen nearly as easily as he can with his tongue, 
provided he can write. Let us believe this story to be true — let 
the cavillers say what they will. 

If Thomas Abbe had been in the church attending to Rev. 
Elam Potter's lecture, where the pastor and deacons doubtless 
thought he ought to have been, this beautiful statue would never 
have been erected, and Taylor's poem would never have been 
written and published in the Atlantic. And there are those who 
claim that the story has no great significance. It was but the 
beating of an old drum about a new church 141 years ago ! 

It is the boast of the British nation that the drum-beat and 
the roaring of its guns, on land and sea, saluting their colors 
as they are raised at sunrise and lowered at sunset, never cease ; 
that the sound is continuous, twice daily encircling the globe. 
Captain Abbe's drum may have turned to dust, and his good 
sword turned to rust, but the story of this drumming makes 
luminous events in the history of our country, that is, the doings 
of the Minute Men of the Revolutionary War. 

The whole country had been for a long time in a ferment 
and many rebellious acts had been committed. The ministers 
of the churches throughout the country were foremost in insti- 
gating opposition to the British rule. The ministers in those 
days were men of education and ability and exercised a tre- 
mendous influence with all the people. There were but few 
Tories among the ministers of the Gospel. The high ideals 
afterward embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in 
the Constitution were the outgrowth of the teaching of the 
ministers of several generations of Americans. 

The beat of the drums and the roar of the guns saluting 
twice daily the British colors the whole world round boastingly 
signifies the power of the migVy British nation. The beating 

146 



of Thomas Abbe's drum symbolizes the spirit of freedom back 
of it which permeated every town, every hamlet of America and 
made possible America's freedom and has proved to the world 
that men with education and character can govern themselves 
and without kings, emperors or lords, and that the eight years' 
struggle, begun the day before Thomas Abbe beat the drum 
about the church at Enfield and ending at Yorktown, proved to 
the world for all generations to come that nations can be free 
if they will. 

We cannot thank Mr. Alden Freeman of East Orange, New 
Jersey, too much for his generosity and patriotism in erecting 
the beautiful statue commemorating a notable event in the history 
of Enfield. 




RECITATION— "THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM." 

By Miss Mae E. McKeever, of East Orange, New Jersey, with great 
dramatic effect, in a musical voice of wide range and rich quality. 

REMARKS BY THE CHAIRMAN, MR. ALLEN B. 
HATHAWAY. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, Invited Guests, Fellow Citizens: 

Enfield is witnessing to-day an event in its history quite as 
unique as the episode of the captain's drum, for seldom has the 
Town of Enfield been asked to accept any gift other than an 
increase in the town's debts. 

147 



We are gathered here this afternoon to view the unveiling 
of this beautiful memorial and to accept it as a free gift from 
Mrs. Joel Francis Freeman and her family, and it gives me 
great pleasure to introduce to you, as her active representative, 
her son, Mr. Alden Freeman of East Orange, New Jersey. 

REMARKS OF ALDEN FREEMAN ON BEHALF OF THE 

DONORS. 
Mr. Chairman, Selectmen of Enfield, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

My speech you already have in your hands in pamphlet 
form. The building of this memorial has been a labor of love. 
From start to finish there has been no jarring note. Of those 
who have designed, modelled and erected the monument, each 
has done his part in a generous, whole-hearted way, "better than 
bargain," to use the quaint language of the report on the erection 
of the old meeting-house in 1775. The memorial, as you see, is 
now practically finished, nearly four months in advance of the 
time agreed upon. 

This is a story told in stone, not only of the Abbey family, 
but also of the other old families of this ancient town. It tells 
the history of Enfield itself and in miniature it also tells the 
story of our country. It tells a tale that stretches from the 
landing at Jamestown in 1607 to those "continuous woods where 
rolls the Oregon" ; from Plymouth Rock in 1620 to the Golden 
Gate in 1849 ; from Connecticut's Western Reserve on the shores 
of Lake Erie to "the brown coils of the Rio Grande" ; from the 
Patriot War in Canada in 1838 to the Mexican War in 1848, 
and right down to the border troubles of the present year. 

The donors have no desire to exploit either the Abbey 
family or Captain Abbey's branch of it. This is merely a study 
of a typical American family of the plain people whom Lincoln 
said he loved because God had made so many of them. These 
Abbeys were farmers, innkeepers, printers, editors, engineers, 
scientists and artists, but above all they have been fighters and 
patriots. There have been no disloyalists among the Abbeys. 
Nor have I found what you could call a rich man among all 
these people. It seems they have always been too busy with 
other things that interested them more to find time to acquire 
wealth. 

This is truly a memorial service that we are holding here 
under these arching elms, for to-day all Abbe descendants are 
mourning the loss of the most distinguished man who has borne 

•148 



the name. Cleveland Abbe died in Washington a week ago today. 
Except for Professor Abbe and for one woman, who is fortu- 
nately with us, this gathering of the Abbey family would not be 
possible. When a young man Cleveland Abbe began to collect 
the records of the family. Fifty-two years ago the author of 
"The History of Windham" wrote that Mr. Abbe had already 
placed under lasting obligation all of the descendants of the 
immigrant, John Abbe, by his contributions of time and money 
to their genealogy. Cleveland Abbe was the pioneer in storm 
warning away back in 1869. As a child I recall that his nick- 
name, "Old Probabilities," was a household word. His labors 
led to the establishment of the United States Weather Bureau 
in 1870. Next he began the display of cautionary storm signals 
along the coast and later the prediction of floods in rivers. In 




1879 he started the agitation for standard time, and in five years 
he gave to the United States and later to the world the standard 
hour meridians now in universal use. I will name only these 
two achievements of this great scientist which have been of 
incalculable practical use to all farmers, mariners, railway men 
and people generally. In the midst of scientific labors of the 
highest importance Professor Abbe always found time for his 
favorite study of family history. He and his collaborator, Mrs. 
Nichols, have located more than 15,000 Abbey descendants in 
the United States and Canada, whose names will be found in the 
Abbe Genealogy now in press. Practically all of these people 
have been notified of this gathering here today and this is due 
to the initiative of Cleveland Abbe, who took a deep interest in 

119 



this memorial and himself selected the names of the Windham 
Abbes who are perpetuated in the inscriptions. 

Just a word about my own little book. My own words in 
it are of small importance, but I urge you to read the quotations. 
In this critical time of our country's history I ask you to ponder 
the words of James Otis, of the Adamses, of Jefferson and 
Patrick Henry and all the revolutionary patriots. Here is a 
collection of the oratory and eloquence which have inspired all 
our national life. I have brought it right up to the present day, 
with words of Elihu Root, of that ardent patriot, Theodore 
Roosevelt, of Charles E. Hughes, who exposed and broke up 
the insurance ring, and of our beloved President, Woodrow Wil- 
son. I ask you to study these sayings between now and election 
day. I hope that you will choose for your guides the greatest 
men in our history, Washington and Lincoln. 

Besides asking you to read these patriotic quotations before 
you vote on Tuesday, I have two suggestions to make to the 
people of this town. In the first place I ask you to preserve 
this venerable building around which Thomas Abbey beat his 
drum in the very year, 1775, in which it was completed. Here 
you possess a shrine in which three generations of your fore- 
fathers were baptized, worshipped, were married and their fune- 
rals held. When the beautiful new church was built in 1848 
this structure became your Town Hall and three succeeding 
generations here fulfilled their duties as free American citizens. 
The New England town meeting was the cradle of American 
independence, and this hall deserves, for all future time, to be 
cherished with affection and with pride by a religious and liberty- 
loving people, such as all your history has shown the citizens 
of Enfield to be. 

My second suggestion is a memorial to Jonathan Edwards 
on the site of the church which preceded the old Town Hall. 
The outline of its walls is, as you are well aware, plainly to be 
seen one-third of a mile to the south, opposite the post-office. 
It was there that Jonathan Edwards preached his most famous 
sermon. As you know, he was born in East Windsor, only nine 
miles away. Enfield will honor itself by erecting a monument to 
the foremost man that Connecticut has produced, the greatest 
theologian of the eighteenth century and one of the chief fore- 
runners of the Revolution. It has been said that if you would 
understand the workings of the mind of New England in the 

150 




ENFIELD TOWN HALL 

"A shrine in which three generations of our forefathers were baptized, worshipped, 

were married and their funerals held." 

Photograph by de W. C. Ward 



eighteenth century and the throbbing of its heart, you must study 
the life and the words of Jonathan Edwards. 

Before making the formal presentation of this memorial to 
the authorized representative of the citizens of the Town of 
Enfield I have one other duty to perform in pursuance of the 
agreement ratified at the town meeting held on November 11, 
1915, and that is to hand this fund to the chairman of the com- 
mittee of the First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield, who is also 
the chairman of this meeting. It is a great satisfaction to place 
the fund in the hands of a man so efficient, so capable, so pains- 
taking and so agreeable as Mr. Hathaway, and I feel confident 
that the money will be wisely invested and the income carefully 
expended for the care and maintenance of the memorial and its 
immediate surroundings on the town lands. 

It is now my agreeable duty, on behalf of my mother, of my 
sister, and of my niece, Mrs. William Thorn Kissel, to present 







to the first selectman of the Town of Enfield, this memorial of 
Captain Abbey and the Abbey family for the use and enjoyment 
of the citizens of this town. My family hope that it may prove 
to be a civic center which will unite all sections of Enfield in the 
efTort to make your growing town worthy of its inspiring past. 

152 



In making this presentation I wish to express our appreciation 
of the unanimous vote by which the citizens of Enfield gave this 
site in perpetuity for the Abbey Memorial and at the same time 
entrusted its care and maintenance to the First Ecclesiastical 
Society of Enfield, who are likewise the custodians of the fund 
which has just been placed in their keeping. 

Mr. Selectman, in the name of the donors, I present to you 
as the representative of all the people of the Town of Enfield 
this Memorial of Thomas Abbey, his ancestors and descendants 
of the Abbey family, to have and to hold from this time forth. 

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY MR. ALBERT J. EPSTEIN, 
FIRST SELECTMAN OF ENFIELD. 
Mr. Freeman, it gives me great pleasure, as representative 
of the Town of Enfield, in accepting this most magnificent gift, 
a memorial erected by you in memory of one of our most 
patriotic citizens, our soldier hero, Captain Thomas Abbey, who, 
when his country was in peril, left his farm to call his fellow 
citizens to arms. The citizens of Enfield join with me in extend- 
ing to you and yours their sincere gratitude for your kindly 
feeling toward this town, in presenting this memorial, erected 
in such historical surroundings, in one of the most beautiful 
spots in old New England. 




UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF CAPTAIN ABBEY. 

By His Great-great-great-granddaughter, Miss Georgiana Abbey 

Van Epps, of East Orange, New Jersey. 

153 



THE FLAG RAISING 

Photographs by Albert K. Dawson of Brown & Dawson, of Stamford, Ct. 

The group on the speakers' stand, from left to right, con- 
sists of Mme. Mulford, Rev. Mr. Means, Rabbi Wise, Rev. Mr. 
Reid, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Verplanck, Rev. Alexander Hamilton, 
Air. Epstein, Mr. Hathaway and Alden Freeman. 




SOLO— "THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER." 
Mme. Mulford, accompanied by Gerald Maas. 

The two flags with which the statue had been draped were 
given to Enfield Church and to the old Town Hall by the donors 
of the memorial. During the singing of the National Anthem they 
were slowly raised to the flagstaff's prepared for them under the 
porticos of the two venerable buildings so closely associated with 
the Abbey Memorial. 



154 



ADDRESS BY RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE, OF THE FREE 

SYNAGOGUE, NEW YORK. 
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Freeman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I have the distinction this afternoon of being the one unique 
figure ; I am not related to the Abbey family — unfortunately for 
the Abbey family. When I was asked to-day whether I was a 
member of the family I said that I should be ashamed to belong 
to a family that counted its family history in generations; that 
my own family goes back to someone whose name began, as 
the Abbey name begins, with "Ab," but the rest of the family 
is rather different. I belong to the Ab-raham family ; and 





tho' just a little unhappy that in my veins there courses none of 
the blood of that family typified by the noble presence just 
unveiled, on the other hand, I like to think that even tho' none 
of my grandfathers signed the Declaration of Independence, one 
of my great-great-great-grandfathers wrote the Ten Command- 
ments. 

It seems to me, Mr. Freeman, ladies and gentlemen, that the 
unveiling exercises of this monument are nothing more than a 
prelude to the great event which is to happen after another four 
years, when all Americans — not only the sons of the Pilgrims, but 
Americans of every blood and faith and ancestry — are to unite 

•156 



in commemorating the close of three centuries — three hundred 
years — of noble daring on the part of those men who were the 
founders of the America we love. 

My one qualification, if aught I have, for speaking in this 
hour — and I have been greatly honored by the invitation — is my 




MODEL OF THE SHIP MAYFLOWER 
devised by the late James Le Baron Willard, Historian of the N. \ 

Society of Mayflower Descendants. 
The Ark of the New Covenant of political and religious liberty which 
was drawn up and signed in her cabin on November 11, 1620. 

feeling of profound veneration — dare I not say it? — of spiritual 
kinship, with those Biblical figures who three hundred years 
ago dared the terrors of the sea, not that they might have some- 
thing for themselves, but that they might give their lives more 



157 



completely to God, to freedom and to righteousness. I always 
think of the Pilgrims as Bible heroes. They were the Mahomets 
of their day, building upon Bible truths, upborne by the Bible 
spirit. 

And then, if I may say so, I am privileged perhaps to be 
here to-day, because I am a churchman, tho' a churchman of the 
older covenant, and I thank God as a churchman that out of the 
church, the old meeting house since 1775, there came the men 
who have written a memorable page in the annals of Enfield, 
of Connecticut, of x\merican history. Back of the American 
Revolution lies the great word and the mighty personality of 
that man, whom in imagination I look upon at this moment, 
Jonathan Edwards, and I love to think that among the men 
whose summons brought to the front on behalf of freedom the 
Minute Men of a later generation, was that great company of men 
of God who were the teachers of religion in their day ; men of 
whom Jonathan Mayhew, for example, is nothing more than an 
outstanding representative. 

Men and women — and I speak particularly to-day to the 
young girls and young men and women — piety is always a high 
virtue, and piety is never a higher virtue than it is in this 
land, just because we are a land, to paraphrase, "wherein there 
are no ruins," wherein there are few ruins ; and piety is a most 
beautiful and precious thing when it is bound up, as this day it is 
bound up, with the memories of the Fathers of the Republic. 
Your poet put it well — "Hallowed ground, where virtue slept 
and valor trod." May we not say that from this day this place 
becomes hallowed ground, where virtue is never to sleep and 
where valor is to tread throughout the ages? 

The culminations of piety are noble things. It is always 
helpful, sustaining, even exalting to invoke great memories, 
memories of the immortal, transfigured, living dead ; for that 
man, Captain Thomas Abbey, lives as truly at this moment as 
any man or woman to-day; and I wonder at this moment who 
of us will be living in memory after another century shall have 
passed, as this man lives, example, exemplar, inspiration to us, 
whether or not of his own blood, who view his noble presence 
nearly one hundred and fifty years after the deed of an American 
man, of an American soldier and of an American gentleman. 

And I ask you to-day, men and women, to remember what 
it is that you are to commemorate. What do you commemorate ? 

158 



Do you wish merely to extol yourselves? Do you wish merely 
to glorify the memories of your forebears? Have you come 
here to lay a laurel wreath upon the memory of this man because 
he was of your own bond or blood? Or have you come here as 
I believe you have come, and as I know the donors of this 
beautiful memorial would have you come, in order that you may, 
as it were, renew the spirit that moved this man in his immortal 
ministrv? 




It was a great poet of another day who said that in order 
to acquire the things that we have inherited from our fathers, 
we must in turn and in our generation, earn them over again. 
Men and women, everything depends on how ancestry is used, 
whether ancestry be a source of noble pride or of ignoble pride ; 
whether you value your ancestry as a spirit of achievement — 
for if you do not, if you look back upon your pride merely as 
something that makes you a little better than your neighbor, 



159 



rather than moves you to be better and to do better than your 
neighbor, then your pride is ignoble, and instead of being en- 
nobling, is unennobling and discrowning. The question is, how 
will you view your ancestry — and it is a great ancestry, you are 
right — remember the ancestry that links you with that figure 
means not privilege but duty, means obligation, means solemn re- 
sponsibility, means that in every generation his children, and his 
children's children's children must rededicate themselves anew to 
the things for which he lived, for which he fought, and the mem- 
ory of which his noble figure recalls. 

I want to have you remember to-day, men and women, 
that Captain Abbey and the men of his day and generation were 
warriors ; they were warriors brave and unafraid, and yet they 
were more than warriors. I am not of their blood and bond, 
but I know them well ; I have studied their lives, I have pon- 
dered upon the motives that impelled them, and if you ask me, 
who chance to be your visitor to-day, to describe this man and 
the men who stood with him, I tell you that they were what the 
Pilgrim fathers had been before them ; they were a company 
of spiritual — of spiritual, mark you — pioneers. The America 
of 1620, the America of Plymouth Rock, was nothing more than 
a prelude. It wasn't to pick a new geographical designation ; 
it didn't mean that a new continent was to be unfolded and 
explored; the America of 1620 and the America of 1775 meant 
that a company of men moved by the spirit of God were ready 
to enter upon a great spiritual enterprise. I don't use the term 
political, or national, or social or civic, because it was more 
than all of these things ; it was above all things a spiritual enter- 
prise and a spiritual conquest ; and the America of the Revolu- 
tion was another spiritual conquest, and the America of 1861-65 
for which these fine men fought, for which these brave men 
bled, the America of 1861 was yet another spiritual enterprise. 
We fought not for the South, nor against the South ; we fought 
— these men fought — for a new rebirth of freedom for America 
and all the world. 

And the America of the future — will we dare to make that 
a spiritual enterprise? We had to conquer the mother land in 
order to create the Republic; the question now faces us, will we 
be great enough to conquer ourselves in order to re-create the 
Republic. What is this new America, of which we ought to 
be the authors, as this man was one of the authors of the America 

160 




Photographed from the Belfry of Enfield Church by Wm. Bradbury Abbey 
during Rabbi Wise's address. In the background the Connecticut River and Valley. 



of his day? What are to be the ideals of America? I found 
my inspiration to-day — or rather I found a confirmation of my 
own thought — in the beautiful badges worn by the gentlemen of 
the Order of Cincinnati. I ask you to remember the primary 
meaning, not the etymological significance, of the term "res 
publica." Res publica is a Latin phrase which is to be translated, 
"the common way" or "the common weal," and the question that 
the America of 1916 faces is this: Do we continue to cherish 
the ideal of the common weal, the ideal of the country which is 
to be served only if needs must in war, but to be served all the 
time, every day and every hour, by the virtues of peace, by the 
valors of peace and by the noblenesses of the light of peace. 
Do you understand what the Republic means — the republic means 
law, one law for all men, and more than one law, one unvarying, 
inflexible justice ; but, men and women, we are more than a 
republic, we are a democratic republic, we are a self-governing, 
a self-ruling republic, and self-government involves two things ; 
first, that we fit ourselves to be the rulers of the Republic, and 
in the next place that we rule the Republic not in our own 
interest, not in our own behalf, not in order to aggrandize some 
one sect, not in order to further our own endeavors, not in 
order to obtain guerdon for some person or combination or 
group ; are we great enough to rule ourselves in the interests 
of the Republic which this great figure helped to create, and 
which, with God's help, we are resolved to ennoble with our 
own lives. 

The time has come for the building of the new America, 
and in order that there may be a new America, there must be an 
understanding, there must be a conciliation, there must be, if I 
may use a New Testament term, an irenikon between the men 
and women of the older order, the children and grandchildren 
of Thomas Abbey on the one hand, and men and women who, 
like myself, have come to America because they chose America, 
because freedom was not in the old world, for we came to 
America not that we might amass wealth — none of this man's 
forebears came to America in order to amass a fortune — God's 
whisper came to the fathers of this man and God's whisper came 
to my fathers, and we have come to America in just the same 
spirit, because life is more than living, or a living, and because 
in America, tho' not in America as it is but in America as it may 
yet become, in the America that we ought to refashion, in the 

162 



America known in all the world, men can rule themselves, we 
can be self-governing, we can minister to the welfare of all, a 
land in which there is one justice for all men. This is the ideal 
that is our own, and I wonder whether I am not speaking out 
of the heart of the donor of this gift, whether I do not convey 
your thought to this company of men and women, when I say to 
you, who are the new settlers of the Republic, America does not 
ask of you that you shall forswear the old loves, the old loyalties. 
If you are French, German, Polish, Slavic, Italian or Spanish, 
love and cherish all those spiritual possessions, all those high 
and exalting memories that you have brought with you from the 
old world, but use them, not for the sake of Germany, of Britain, 
or France or Russia or Austria or Italy or Turkey; use them 
for the interest of the land which deserves and has our supreme 
loyalty, the American Republic. 

America — how wide its domains ! And yet it is not great 
enough to harbor a single divided allegiance. There is no room 
in America for the hyphenated American, no German- Americans, 
no English- Americans, no French- Americans ; the only American 
is the American- American, the American who sets his allegiance 
to America above every other loyalty, above every other passion. 

I sometimes say to my friends that I have two religions ; the 
one is the religion of Israel, the other is the religion of America. 
America must become anew to us, a religion, a faith, an ideal, 
the deepest and the holiest passion of our lives. 

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I must not detain you 
longer ; only one word let me add. 

I love to think that this memorial is not to be of the past 
long ; it is to be a help, it is to be an incentive for the present ; 
it is to be a stimulus and inspiration for the future ; the past 
belonged to Thomas Abbey, his kinsmen, the men of his own 
blood and bond; but the future belongs to all the men and all 
the women and all the children of Enfield ; the past belonged to 
the builders; the future is to be the inalienable possession of the 
rebuilders of this community, and I wonder if I do not read 
aright the spirit of Mr. Freeman and his mother and sister when 
I say they would be sore disappointed if this spot, hallowed by 
ennobling memories, does not become the center of the spiritual 
life of this town. Great ideals and hallowed memories are cen- 
tered here and every man, every woman and every child in Enfield 
should feel, "This memorial is mine, this man and this memory 

163 



has become a part of my life," and thus will this memorial be 
the new center of the new life of this city. 

A gentleman a moment ago used a term which I as a teacher 
of religion and as an American have no right to have heard 
without adding my own thought and my own word, for there 
are times when a man must speak if he will be true to himself, 
true to his faith and to his own soul. 

It is true Thomas Abbey was not too proud to fight, and 
the men who stood by the side of Thomas Abbey were not too 
proud to fight, but Thomas Abbey was too proud to fight for 
anything less than the right, for the right as he saw it; for the 
great ideal, the ideal of liberty. This man was a better English- 
man than the George who sat upon the English throne; this 
man and Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Hancock, and 
Franklin, and Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson ; these 
men were the great Englishmen of their day; they and the Pitts, 
not the Georges. 

He wasn't too proud tc fight for the right, but as I look 
upon that noble fact, but as I look upon that noble face I dare 
to say of him that he was too proud to fight for the wrong; he 
was too proud to fight for the sake of fighting; and I love to 
think that if he were alive to-day he would say : "We will fight, 
for an ideal as great as America, if fight we must we will fight 
for America, the America of our lives, of our hopes and our 
dreams and ideals, but we will fight for nothing less," and if 
these warriors of yesterday were living they would become war- 
riors in the new cause, the cause that America is to lead, the 
cause in the leading of which America is to achieve a new 
dignity, a new glory, and a fadeless immortality; a war against 
war, that is unjust, that is unrighteous, that is unhallowed. 

Soldier of God, Pilgrim of God, Maker of the Republic, we 
salute thee ! Let thy spirit rest upon this company, upon this 
community, upon the State and commonwealth of Connecticut, 
upon the America which you gave us, you and like-minded men ; 
the America which we this day solemnly resolve that we will 
hand down to our children and our children's children unstained, 
unmarred and unpolluted, an America worthy of you, your deeds, 
your life, your memory. 



164 




mm 



SHERRY E. FRY, 

Sculptor 



de W. C. WARD, 

Photographer 



ADDRESS BY WILLIAM E. VERPLANCK, ESQ., OF 
MOUNT GULIAN, FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Mr. Freeman, our 
Host: 

It gives me great pleasure to be present here on this fine 
Indian summer day. I feel favored in being numbered among 
the guests of Mr. Freeman, who have gathered to do honor to 
the memory of his ancestor, Thomas Abbey, whose statue has 
just been unveiled — an impressive figure it is. 

Before leaving New York this morning I took breakfast 
with one of the architects who designed the splendid exedra 
which forms a fine setting, and he, a New England man, told me 




MOUNT GULIAN 
Showing at the right the addition built in 1 804. 

that Enfield was one of the most beautiful New England villages 
and he described its position and other attractions. I now see 
that he did not at all exaggerate. We Hudson River people 
have no such villages. It was not because we did not like them, 
but it was due to the different way in which our region was 
settled. All along the river were great tracts of several thousand 
acres each, such as one still sees in the Southern States. Each 
estate or plantation was self-maintained and self-sufficient. 
There was no need of a village and those that sprang up at cross- 
roads were frowned upon by the landowners. But now that 
most of, these Hudson River estates have been broken up into 
much smaller holdings, villages of considerable size have ap- 

• 166 



peared in the natural order of things, in which we miss the 
broad elm-lined streets and picturesque greens of the New 
England villages. 

You have heard to-day of the Society of the Cincinnati and 
of Thomas Abbey being a member of it and of the Verplanck 
mansion at Fishkill-on-Hudson being the site where it was 
organized on May 13, 1783. This old house was built early in 
the eighteenth century, some time before the French and Indian 
War, by Gulian Verplanck, a merchant of New York, and named 
Mount Gulian after his grandfather, who with his partner, 




The room in which the Society of the Cincinnati was formed. 



Francis Rombout, of French extraction, had bought the land 
on which the house stands from the Wappinger Indians — a tract 
of about 80,000 acres — and the Indian title, a few years after, 
was confirmed by James II in 1685. The Indians were per- 
mitted and encouraged to remain upon the land, where they 
trapped beavers, raccoons, weasles, bears and other fur-bearing 
animals for the proprietors who carried on trade in furs and 
peltries at New Amsterdam, shipping them to England and the 
Continent. The Indians were always treated fairly by the Hud- 
son River landowners, and there were no wars or serious dis- 



sensions. 



167 



The old house of which I am now the owner stands on true 
east side of Newburg Bay, opposite the city of Newburg. The 
entire region is replete with historic sites and associations. The 
mansion was occupied during the years 1782-83 by Baron Steuben 
as a headquarters by voluntary cession of its then owner, Samuel 
Verplanck, who had been a member of the Committee of Safety 
in the early part of the war, but who, because of age and ill- 
health, had retired from active life. Steuben, as you all will 
recall, was a German and had been in the army of Frederick 
the Great, under whom he had become a valuable officer, par- 
ticularly as disciplinarian and tactician. But Steuben came to us 
wholly without King Frederick's aid or suggestion. He came 
after talking with Franklin and Deane, our commissioners at 
Paris, where Steuben met them on his travels, for Frederick 
had given him leave of absence, the Seven Years' War being 
over. This is not the time to tell all the good Steuben did in 
our cause in drilling our raw troops, etc. He took part in 
forming the Order of the Cincinnati with Washington and Knox, 
whose headquarters were nearby — on the opposite bank of the 
river, near Newburg. It was there, too, that the army was dis- 
banded and that Washington refused the crown. A few miles 
below is West Point and Constitution Island, where the chain 
was stretched across the river. Close by, in the Highlands, are 
Forts Montgomery and Clinton. At old Fishkill Village large 
bodies of troops were stationed throughout the war and Wash- 
ington went there frequently. The Daughters of the American 
Revolution have marked the historic sites with appropriate 
tablets. 

I extend an invitation to all present to visit the region and I 
assure you of a welcome at the Steuben headquarters. My wife 
had an ancestor from Connecticut, Ephraim Kirby, who became 
a member of the Cincinnati Society and she has a letter of his 
which he wrote to Reynold Marvin, of Litchfield, whose daugh- 
ter Ruth he afterwards married, and whither he returned to 
practice law and became the first law reporter in the United 
States. In his letter he tells some of the causes which actuated 
the officers in forming the society. The letter was first published 
in the New England Magazine in some articles which I wrote 
on the historic homesteads in the neighborhood of Fishkill. 
These magazine articles appeared in March, 1895, and in August, 
1896. 

168 




BARON STEUBEN 

The Statue by Albert Jaegers which faces the White House in Washington 



169 



Kirby writes from Saratoga, 23d June, 1783, as follows : 
"The Army are at last disbanded, all except the men who 
were enlisted for three years, and a sufficient number of officers 
to command them. This was determined by agreement among 
the officers, unless where a sufficient number could not agree, by 
lot. It has fallen to my share to remain for one. However, 
I have the most earnest expectations of being soon after them. 
"The ingratitude and villainous conduct of the country have 
occasioned the officers of the army to come into an agreement to 
assemble annually by Lines in their respective States, and the 
whole triennially at some convenient place near the middle of 




MOUNT GULIAN 
Showing the original house built about 1740 by Gulian Verplanck, grandson of the 
original proprietor of the same name, who bought the land from the Indians in 1 683 

the United States to consult on matters of common concern. 
They have also established a fund composed of one month's pay 
from each officer and deposited in the care of a committee for 
the purpose of relieving the necessities of any distressed officer, 
his widow or orphans. 

"The army find that the common acts of humanity are not 
to be expected from the country they have rescued from tyranny 
and that no reliance can be placed on those contracts and solemn 
obligations ; they are therefore drove to this expedient to secure 
themselves in some measure against the miseries of poverty." 

It is likely that Thomas Abbey was at the Steuben head- 



170 



quarters during his career as an officer and also knew Colonel 
Kirby. Ephraim Kirby became an officer in a Rhode Island 
regiment but after the war returned to Litchfield and married 
Ruth Marvin. One of his descendants, David Kirby, of New 
York, holds the insignia and other evidences of membership in 
the Society. 

In closing, for the time for the train is drawing near, I 
wish to repeat to all my invitation to visit the Cincinnati mansion 
and the beautiful region of the Highlands of the Hudson, through 
which passes a fine State road, on the line of the old Albany- 
New York turnpike, near which the old house stands. 




CERTIFICATE OF MEMBERSHIP 

In the Society of the Cincinnati signed by George Washington as President, and 

General Knox as Secretary, December 10, 1785. 



THE BENEDICTION 

Was pronounced by Rev. Oliver W. Means, of Hartford, pastor 

of Enfield Church, 1888-1901. 



171 




172 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
: earing the order of the Cincinnati, which has descended to his great-grandson, Rev. Alexander 
Hamilton, Chaplain of the N. Y. Society of the Cincinnati. 

From the painting by Edgar Brown Smith. 



LIST OF THE 155 PASSENGERS ON THE 
ABBEY MEMORIAL TRAIN, 

New York to Enfield Bridge, November 4, 1916. 

Rev. Alexander Hamilton, Chaplain N. Y. State Society of 
the Cincinnati; John B. Lord, Charles A. Rose, Henry Justus 
Storrs, W. Lanier Washington, John P. H. de Windt, William 
W. Taulman, Thomas J. Bonnell, Matthew Hinman, Walter 
Marvin, Nicholas A. Lowe, William Decatur Parsons, Frank 
Bowman, Major Charles Elliot Warren, James Van Dyk, David 
Beatty Idell, Henry Preble, Chandler Smith, William H. Ad- 
doms 2d, Ward Belknap, Captain J. M. Andrews, Dr. George 
Trotter Tyler, George L. Storer, Williamson Thomas, Edward 
G. Rollins, Henry W. Raymond, Francis R. Stoddard, Richard 
H. Gaines, Richard W. Withington, William Pike Glenney, John 
Higgin, Walter Byron Jones, Alden Freeman, Frederick C. 
Torrey. 

All of those named above are members of the Society of 
the Cincinnati. Other members of the Cincinnati who attended 
the exercises were Louis R. Cheney, Charles E. Jackson, E. 
Kent Hubbard and John Henry Livingston, who, with Mrs. Liv- 
ingston, motored from their historic home on the Hudson, 
"Clermont," for which Robert Fulton named his first steam- 
boat. 

Captain Richard Henry Greene, founder of the Society of 
Mayflower Descendants, and Mrs. Greene; Mrs. L. Nelson 
Nichols, author of "The Abbe-Abbey Genealogy"; Edward G. 
Nichols, Mr. and Mrs. Decatur M. Sawyer, Dr. Appleton Mor- 
gan, Sherry E. Fry, Ernest F. Lewis, Edwin Shuttleworth, 
Mr. and Mrs. Grosvenor S. Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver J. 
Wells, Mrs. Charles Lewis Johnson, Mrs. Chauncey Marshall, 
Miss Edith G. Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Romeyn, 
Mrs. G. C. Archer and two friends from Hazelton, Pa. ; Mr. 
and Mrs. S. Carman Harriot, Rev. Robert W. Mark, pastor 
First Presbyterian Church of Woodbridge, N. J., and Mrs. 
Mark ; Rev. Cornelius Brett, D. D., pastor Bergen Reformed 
Church of Jersey City, N. J., and Mrs. Brett ; Herbert L. Bridg- 
man, editor Brooklyn Standard Union; Ira H. Brainerd, Miss 
Brainerd, Henry F. Bell, James Boyd, president Alumni Asso- 
ciation of New York University; Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. 
Higbie, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards Hall Rockwell, Mrs. Maurice 
Bouvier, William P. H. Bacon, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Bancel 

174 



Binsse and son, De Witt C. Ward, Miss Remie Ward, Dr. 
Morris Lee King, Miss Jean Macgowan, Willis A. Voorhees and 
son, Miss Gail A. Treat, founder of the Society of Descendants 
of Colonial Governors; Mrs. Robert B. Treat and Robert B. 
Treat, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Julian A. Gregory, Mr. and Mrs. 
Tracy Lanterman, Mr. and Mrs. Linwood C. Gillis, Mr. and 
Mrs. Frank H. Jamison and the Misses Jamison, Mrs. Florence 
P. Paulson, Herbert Smith, John A. Higson, J. A. Macdonell, 
Mr. and Mrs. William Ogden Wiley, Miss Annie C. Quimby, 
Ogden Halsted Bowers, the Misses Bowers, Mrs. Alfred H. 



I #11 




CLERMONT, TIVOLI-ON-HUDSON, N. Y. 
The home of John Henry Livingston, great-great-great-great-grandson of Robert Living' 
ston, 1st Lord of Livingston Manor, great-great-grandson of Philip Livingston, signer 
of the Declaration of Independence, and great-grandson of Chancellor Robert R. Liv- 
ingston, the associate of Robert Fulton, who named the first steamboat after this house, 
which was built in 1730 by Robert Livingston, son of the 1st Lord of the Manor. 

Thacher, Mrs. Thomas D. Webb, Mrs. William Cooper, Miss 
Emma Cooper, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Shepard, Mr. and Mrs. 
Frederick W. Kelsey, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick T. Kelsey, 
Ronald B. Kelsey, Miss Susan Withington, Albert K. Dawson, 
Mr. and Mrs. John E. Mitchell, Mrs. James E. Pope, Miss 
Gertrude Chittick, V. David Newman, Miss Hall, Walter Abbe, 
Miss Elizabeth K. Abbe, Mrs. Hubert Howson, Miss Helen 
Elizabeth Howson, Miss Harriet Colgate Abbe, William Abbe, 
Mr. and Mrs. William Bradbury Abbey, Rev. Edward W. Abbey, 



175 



Miss Lucile Abbey, Stuart B. Reynolds, Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo 
H. Abbey, Ralph H. Abbey, Mrs. Ella Abbey White, Mrs. Joel 
Francis Freeman, Mrs. R. T. Van Epps, Miss Georgiana Abbey 
'Van Epps, Miss Susan Armstrong, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick 
R. Maddock, Gaetano Federici, Mrs. Florence Mulford Hunt, 
Gerald Maas, Miss Mae E. McKeever, Miss Jennie Waterman, 
Miss Justine Dorothy Wise, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Mrs. 
Wise, Thomas C. Gilchrist, John W. Daly, Benjamin McGuire, 
August C. Peterson, Miss Rose Galligan, Miss Bridget Gal- 
ligan and six others whose names we failed to record. 

Others who attended the exercises included Mrs. Frances 
Louise Abbe Boise, of Ansonia, Connecticut; Miss Bertha B. 
Bartlett, of Lynn, Massachusetts, and Dr. and Mrs. Nathan G. 
Estes, of Newport, Rhode Island. 

Mention should be made of the gracious offer by the ladies 
of the Enfield Church to provide luncheon in the church parlors 
for the out-of-town guests, who were unable to accept their 
hospitality on account of the short stop of the special train. All 
of the party, however, partook of the hospitality of the gen- 
erous automobile owners whose cars met the train at Enfield 
Bridge. 

At the exercises Chief of Police J. H. Callahan was ably 
assisted by the local and State police. Thanks are also due to 
the members of the Enfield Hose Company and to the capable 
parking committee. The seating arrangements on the platform 
were admirable, separate sections being allotted and plainly 
marked for the clergy, the Grand Army Post, the Daughters of 
the American Revolution, the members of the Abbe Family, 
the Woman's Club and the senior class of the Enfield High 
School. 

The clergymen present included Rev. Thomas J. Preston of 
the Catholic Church, Rev. R. Russ Judd of the Episcopal, Rev. 
William S. Voorhees of the Presbyterian, Rev. J. Howard Tait 
of the United Presbyterian, Rev. Harvey C. Dorr of the Metho- 
dist, all of Thompsonville ; Rev. Thomas Tyrie of the Methodist 
Church in Hazardville, Rev. C. E. Hesselgrave and Rev. C. M. 
Calderwood of the Congregational in South Manchester, Conn. ; 
Rev. Oliver W. Means of the Congregational Church in Hart- 
ford, and Rev. David C. Reid, pastor of the Congregational 
Church in Enfield, who was a classmate of President Wilson at 
Princeton, and is the author of various works on sociological and 
economic problems. 

176 





MISS HARRIET COLGATE ABBE 
Miss Abbe and Mrs. Howson are sisters 
of the late Cleveland Abbe, Walter 
Abbe, and Dr. Robert Abbe. 



WALTER ABBE 
Owner of "Dog Hill," the Abbe home- 
stead at Windham, Ct., which belonged 
to his grandfather, Moses Cleveland 
Abbe. 




MRS. HUBERT HOWSON (Helen Abbe) 

From the painting by the late John W. Alexander 



Captain Abbey 

and Enfield's 

Municipal 

Christmas Tree, 

1916 




JONATHAN EDWARDS'S MOST NOTABLE SERMON, 

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." 
By J. Warren Johnson. 

On the 8th day of July, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached 
the most noted sermon extant in the English language at this 
day, on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," in the little 
church, 40 by 45 feet, standing on the Green nearly one-half 
a mile south of the present church in front of my home. For 
nearly thirty-five years after that it was the Church of the First 
Society of Enfield. Some of the timbers of that church that 
echoed the fearful words of that sermon are still in existence. 

I have said that this sermon was the most noted sermon 
extant in the English language. Enfield is known and noted 
nearly as much by it as it is by its most beautiful street and by 
its church, which is said to be the finest example of Colonial 
Church architecture, and you will find in Ian Maclaren's "Beside 
the Bonnie Brier Bush," that Lachlan Campbell, after Marget 
Howe had written the letter to Flora and got Lachlan's approval, 
"cleaned and trimmed with anxious hand a lamp that was kept 
for show and had never been used," and selected from his books 
Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "Coles 
on the Divine Sovereignty," and on them had laid the large family 
Bible on which he set the lamp in the window, and every night 
till Flora returned the light shone down the path that ascended 
to her home, "like the divine love from the open door of our 
Father's House." 

A most dramatic description of the scenes of that 8th day 
of July, 1741, is fortunately preserved for us in the Diary of 
Rev. Stephen Williams of Longmeadow, as well as in the tradi- 
tions handed down to us by descendants of those who were 
present. 

Several years since Dr. E. F. Parsons (blessed be his 
memory) went to Longmeadow with me and through the 
courtesy of Prof. Wm. B. Medlicott, of Harvard, and his wife, 
we were permitted to see the diaries of Rev. Stephen Williams, 
and we found the account of that day, but woe betided us, for 
we could read hardly a word of it, so execrable was the pen- 
manship. So one day I got Mr. James Allen Kibbe, the 
genealogist and expert at deciphering ancient manuscripts, to go 
to Longmeadow with me and we spent a long time copying 

178 



the writing, and were finally rewarded by getting all but a few 

words. And this was what we found : 

"July 8th, 1741. 

"Deu. 32:35. 

"Vengeance is mine and recompense. 

"In due time their foot shall slide. 

"This time Mr. M. preached from 2 Cor. 5:20 & Mr. 
Williams from Acts. 2:51. Discourses solemn and the Congrega- 
tion considerably affected & many cried out. We went to Mr. 
Reynolds' and dined, and then went over to Enfield, where we 
met dear Mr. Edwards, of North Hampton, who preached a 
most awakening sermon from these words Deu. 32 :35 and before 
sermon was done there was a great moaning and crying out, 
'What shall I do to be saved ? Oh, I am going to hell ! Oh what 
shall I do for a Christ?' &c, &c, until the minister was obliged 
to desist. The screeches and cries were pitiful and agonizing. 
And after some time of waiting the Congregation were stilled so 
that a prayer was made by Mr. Williams, and after that we 
descended from the Pulpit & discoursed with the people, some 
in one place and some in another. And an amazing and astonish- 
ing power of God was seen, and several souls were happily 
wrought upon that night, the cheerfulness and pleasantness of 
their countenances (several words were undecipherable) Oh, 
that God would strengthen and confirm * * * & then" 

"July 9th, 1741. 

"Oh, that God would give me great desire in my soul to see 
at Longmeadow what I have seen in Enfield." 

This is the end of what we could make out of the diary. 

Much of the foregoing, and additional scenes have come 
down by tradition from their ancestors to the present generation 
of Enfield people. They declared that so vivid was hell painted 
by Edwards that many grasped the railing of the pews, as if to 
save themselves from then and there descending into the bot- 
tomless pit. One old man named Meacham, with tears running 
down his face, and his long white hair streaming down his 
shoulders, rose and cried out "Oh for a Christ ! Is there no 
balm in Gilead, is there no physician there?" The answer 
to which to us of this day would seem to be an adequate 
answer to the whole brilliant, but terrible sermon. Just one 
sentence I will give as a sample of it all. "The bow of God's 
wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and 
justice aims the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and 

179 



it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that an angry 
God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the 
arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood." 
Christ's name hardly appears in this sermon. A large part of 
the sermon is in the same strain. 

After twenty-four years spent as pastor of what is now 
called the Edwards' Church at Northampton, President Edwards 
was forced to resign on account of differences between him and 
his church about some doctrinal beliefs and his denunciation of 
the morals of some of the children of the rich people of his 
parish, and then he went to the church at Stockbridge, Mass., 
and was also missionary to the Indians there, but very shortly he 
was chosen president of what is now Princeton College and so 
was a predecessor of our President in that office. He died after 
holding that office a few weeks, from smallpox. He left a numer- 
ous family, from whom have descended some of the most famous 
men of our nation. More than fifteen hundred of his descendants 
are now living, among them a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. 

In every part of the United States are found men and 
women who owe to Jonathan Edwards a vigor of intellect and 
character that makes them noteworthy. Through six generations 
his intellectual and moral force has projected itself and each 
successive generation has used this inheritance grandly. 

His descendants have furnished three presidents to Yale 
College, Timothy Dwight, Theodore Dwight Woolsey and Tim- 
othy Dwight, Jr., all of whom were descendants of Jonathan 
Edwards's daughter Mary. His descendants have also furnished 
presidents for Princeton, Hamilton, Union, Amherst and Johns 
Hopkins, and for several law schools and theological seminaries, 
and they are listed among the alumni of forty-five American and 
foreign colleges. 

Jonathan Edwards left a family of eleven children in what 
would be called extreme poverty at this day, but he left them a 
legacy of keen intellect and fine moral character which was of 
inestimable value. Out of all the multitude of his descendants 
the solitary "black sheep" of the Edwards family was Aaron 
Burr, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards. 

The historian Bancroft declared that Jonathan Edwards and 
Benjamin Franklin were the two greatest men America had pro- 
duced. Edwards's writings long held supreme authority; in 
Europe, as well as in America, he was ranked among the great 
thinkers of the world. 

180 



The theology of Jonathan Edwards may be dead and his 
books unread, but the man was greater than the theologian. In 
leaving to his posterity the legacy that he gave, he did the best 
a man can do for the world. 

He was the son of Timothy Edwards, pastor of the church 
at East Windsor Hill, about eight miles south of Enfield, and 
the cellar hole of the house where he was born may be seen 
now. He was a great logician, and Edwards on the "Freedom 
of the Will" and many other metaphysicial works placed him 
at the head of all American thinkers on those subjects. But 
men no longer believe that there is no freedom of the will, that 
it is forever decreed "that you shall and you shall not, that you 
can and you cannot," and as Hudibras puts it, "you'll be damned 
if you do, and you'll be damned if you don't." 

Rev. Stephen Williams, who wrote out the story in his 
diary, was pastor of the church in Longmeadow for sixty-six 
years. He was born in Deerfield, Mass., May 14th, 1693, and was 
the son of Rev. John Williams. With his father, mother and 
sister Eunice he was captured by the Indians when they slaugh- 
tered many of the inhabitants of Deerfield in February, 1704, and 
he and his father were ransomed fourteen months afterwards. 
Eunice was but eight years old when captured and taken to 
Canada. The mother was slain. Eunice, many years after- 
wards, was induced to visit her relatives several times, but 
wearied of the civilized life and returned to her Indian home, 
and lived and died there. She knew no language but the Indian 
tongue. 

The diaries of Stephen Williams, of which there are a 
large number, were preserved and came down to Rev. John W. 
Harding, pastor of the Longmeadow Church from 1849 till he 
died a few years since, and for a long time yclept the "Bishop 
of Longmeadow," and from him came to his daughter, now the 
wife of Prof. Wm. B. Medlicott, and it was through their cour- 
tesy that I was able to get a copy of the part of the diary I have 
given. Many will remember good, sweet, Minister Harding. 
The first time he appeared in our pulpit was at the funeral of 
our pastor, Rev. Francis LeBaron Robbins, in April, 1850, and 
who had preached in the Enfield Church thirty-three years. 

NOTE — This paper was written for and read at the annual 
meeting of the First Congregational Church of Enfield on Jan- 
uary 15, 1914. 

181 




BERGEN REFORMED CHURCH, OF JERSEY CITY 
This earliest church in New Jersey was founded by the Dutch, in 1660. The 
charter was signed by Governor Peter Stuyvesant. Built in 1 842, this is the fourth 
church edifice, but in 257 years the congregation has had only five pastors. 



182 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUMBEAT. 

Sermon Delivered by Rev. Cornelius Brett, D. D., at Bergen 

Reformed Church, Jersey City, N. J. 

Sunday Evening, November 12, 1916. 

On a recent day, it was my privilege to journey to Enfield, 
Conn., on a special train, by invitation of Mr. Alden Freeman 
and other members of his family. There we found a goodly 
company assembled to unveil a monument erected by the Abbey 
family of New England, in honor of their Revolutionary An- 
cestor, Captain Thomas Abbey of the Enfield Minute Men. 

The story runs that when the Battle of Lexington had been 
fought, couriers on horseback rode off in every direction to 
warn the people and to rouse the country. One of those riders 
came in at a furious rate, his horse covered with foam, to the 
little town of Enfield, Connecticut, about fourteen miles from 
Hartford. There he told his story. It seems that at that time 
in New England the churches not being lighted, all the week-day 
services were held in the day-time, and in this church of Enfield 
was gathered that afternoon a company for the usual Thursday 
religious lecture ; it was their mid-week service. 

The Captain heard the news, for he had not gone to church 
that day, probably expecting some news from the scene where 
war might at any time arise. He went for his drum, beating 
the long roll, marched around the old meeting house of the 
Congregational Church. The walls of the church did not fall 
down as the walls of Jericho when Joshua's host summoned the 
surrender by the blast upon the ram's horn, but literally this 
doughty Captain drummed the people out of church, for they 
came — they could not listen to the lecture any longer when they 
heard the roll of the drum. They knew there was something 
in the air, that some great event had happened, and the Minute 
Men joined their Captain. 

When he ceased his drumming on the village green they 
heard the news, received their instructions and vanished to their 
nearby homes to put on the powder horn and to grasp the old 
rifle and put a few little necessities into the knapsack, and soon 
they came back again to reassemble at the roll of the drum and 
the command "Fall in !" Before nightfall they were on their 
way to Boston, where they presented themselves in due time, a 
hundred miles from their home, to Gen. Washington, in com- 
mand of the great army of the Continentals. 

183 



To this man, these, his descendants, have caused a monu- 
ment to be raised, a glorious monument presenting the leader 
himself, his likeness taken from old pictures in possession of the 
family, and there upon that very village green where the Minute 
Men of 1775 assembled, the people of Enfield and many 
thousands who will go there, may see the representative of the 
old-time Captain whose drum did so much for the spirit of 
independence, and later in the battles also, for its accomplish- 
ment. 

A poet of New England, Benjamin F. Taylor (sounds very 
much, does it not, like the name of our Benjamin C. Taylor of 
dear memory, pastor of this church for forty-four years and 
emeritus for ten years longer). This poet has written this 
story in beautiful verse. At the unveiling ceremonies it was 
recited, and we have the rare privilege of having with us the 
young lady who recited it on that occasion, and has kindly con- 
sented, before the rest of the sermon shall be preached, to give 
it to you. Will you listen to the story of "The Captain's Drum- 
beat?'' Miss McKeever: 

(Poem recited by Miss Mae E. McKeever of East Orange, 
N. J. After the recitation Dr. Brett continued.) 

I know your hearts are stirred by this recital in prose and 
in poetry. 

When we want to find something very heroic in order to 
stimulate our own thoughts and our own purposes, we turn back 
to the story of the ancient days, to the ancient Hebrews. The 
Joshua lesson has been read to you to-day. For our text we go 
back a little even of Joshua, and we read in the 15th chapter of 
Exodus, verses 20-21 : 

"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a 
timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with 
timbrels and with dances. 

"And Miriam answered them, sing ye to the Lord, for he 
hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea." 

I have chosen this text because the timbrel was the fore- 
runner of the modern drum, a sort of hand drum whose noise 
came like the drumbeat of to-day, by percussion, and I am 
talking of the drumbeat which is needed in our present day to 
drum the people out of church. I understand well the first duty 
of the minister as captain of the company of this day, is to 

184 



drum the people into church. They tell the story in some of 
the old New England villages, before the bell was purchased 
and hung in the steeple, while clocks and watches were few, that 
in order to tell the people when it was time to go to church a- 
little drum corps, three or four drummers, came down the village 
street and as the people heard it and looked out to see their 
own boys beating the drum, they said, "It is time now to go to 
meeting," and so arrayed in Sunday best — which was not always 
so fine a fabric as clothes the people now — they turned out of 
their houses and followed the drummer to the door of the 
church, where they entered reverently with bowed heads to 




MISS MAE E. McKEEVER, Singer and Elocutionist 

Photograph by Harry G. Potter, of Newark 

worship God and hear the lesson of the hour. 

I understand fully that it is our duty as captains of com- 
panies here to go out and drum the people in, to tell them when 
it is time to go to church, and inform them the duties of the 
hour. 

We go up and down the streets visiting the homes of the 
people ; we go into the homes of the parents of the pupils of 
our Sunday School, and we beg them to come with their chil- 
dren to the house of God; and this, however successful we may 
be in the work, seems to be the first duty of the hour. But we 
understand that church-going is not always, or is not all of 

185 



religion. You know, one of our poets who hated the Mexican 
War, in 1849, said: 

"What's the use of meetin' goin' every Sunday, wet or dry 
If we are to go a-mowin' brother men like wheat or rye?" 
And there is a great deal in that short stanza, or half a stanza 
of Lowell's, for it tells us that "meetin' going' " as he expresses 
it — church attendance, as we now speak of it in more refined 
language — is not all of our profession of faith, and does not 
fulfil all the duties of our holy religion. 

I know that there is in some churches a willingness to lie 
back and be very well satisfied while we have no thought for 
the people who are without. We enjoy our religion. Why 
should we not enjoy it, and why should we not take away com- 
fort in it? There is a sweet and hallowed influence which per- 
vades the sanctuary, and the Christian heart responds : 

"My willing soul would stay 
In such a frame as this, 
And sit and sing itself away, 
To everlasting bliss." 

The Christian Spirit asks for no higher service than to wait 
here until translated to the place where 

"Congregations ne'er break up 
And Sabbaths have no end." 

But we turn to the heroic in verse and in prose, to the 
incidents of heroism as we find them in the Word of God, and 
we come back to them, that there is a duty to be performed by 
the ministers of God, which resembles that of this Captain 
Thomas Abbey in 1775, when it is our duty to drum the people 
out of church in order to go after some people who do not go 
to church. For the service of the very church itself, we go out 
and find our neighbors and bring them back to the household of 
faith. The missionary spirit is the spirit that should characterize 
every church. 

We have frequently advised you that the congregation of 
the disciples of Jesus Christ is a force as well as a field. It is 
a field to cultivate, for you come here to listen, to worship God 
first of all, and then to listen to words which inspire you and 
which instruct you, perhaps — they ought to do so, they are 
valueless unless they both instruct and inspire and urge you to 
your duty. The worship of God is in the street as well as in the 
church ; it is in the homes of your neighbors where you may 

186 




MAJOR GENERAL PETER MUHLENBERG 

Statue in Philadelphia City Hall by J. Otto Schweizer 
In 1775 this clergyman was preaching in the Episcopal Church at Woodstock 

Virginia. He said: 

"There is a time for all things — a time to preach and a time to pray; but there is 

also a time to fight, and that time has now come!" 

Throwing off his gown, he displayed the full military uniform of a colonel, having 

just accepted a commission from General Washington. Leaving his pulpit, he went 

into the field with nearly 300 members of his congregation under his flag. 



go to bear an invitation to enter the sanctuary, and you are 
drumming out to drum others in, for there is a drum waiting 
everyone who would be in the faithful service of Jesus Christ, to 
rouse to the military spirit those people who fail to attend the 
services of the sanctuary and who are thus derelict in their duty 
and false to their faith. 

But this is not all. We would drum the people out of 
church that they may enter into the civic life of the community 
and do civic service. Social service is born of the church, it origi- 
nated in the church, in the teachings of our Lord and Saviour, 
Jesus Christ. The greatest social reformer was that man who 
came to give his life for men and who preached to the unfortu- 
nate, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them when 
Jesus Christ is made manifest in the world. Therefore, we are 
to join in social service. Ably and amply have the citizens of 
Jersey City responded to the Master's call. I know of no city 
of like size where there are more institutions for the care of the 
unfortunate. Right in our own avenue we have a Home for 
Aged Women. The children of the Home for the Friendless 
attend our own services every Sunday, and out among the people 
the ambulances are running to and fro to carry the wounded and 
the sick to the hospitals which we care for. Through all these 
efforts we are trying every year and every day of every year 
to find out the unfortunate and the needy and to help them 
either individually, personally or by some association, until we 
get back to our organized Aid Society, which is the clearing 
house of all these charities. A great deal is spent in entertain- 
ments, concerts, which are given for the raising of funds to 
support these institutions. But beyond the money which you 
pay for tickets and which you give without return, beyond the 
money that comes from the people of the city, there must be 
the service in management. These matters must have the brain- 
power of men and women behind them, and they have it, and 
the church is drummed out to its social service. 

We did not have to drum you out in order to have you 
vote, or those of you who are entitled to vote, to vote on Tues- 
day last. There was a record-breaking vote on that day, they 
tell us ; but there are times, there have been times, and there 
may be times again when the church must take sides on issues 
on which the people vote, and when it may be the duty of the 
minister to tell you how to vote and to lead you to the place as 

188 



the faithful servants of Jesus Christ, to vote as you pray and 
to vote for the kingdom of God and its progress among humanity. 

We need to-day this spirit of loyalty to the church and to be 
willing always to place the church on the side of everything that 
is right and opposed to everything that is wrong; to move for- 
ward at the behest of the Almighty, who cried, just before 
Miriam began her song, "Go forward, for the God Jehovah has 
spoken the word. Speak unto the people that they go forward." 
The church of God enlisted in every great reform and enlisted 
upon the side of righteousness and everlasting truth. 

But again, we drum the people out of their churches in 
order to align them in the great unified bodv of the church of 
God. 

"We are not divided, all one body we, 
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.'' 

The church of Jesus Christ is a unit. We meet in our 
separate churches for the convenience of division and labor ; we 
are members of denominational bodies for the same reason, in 
order to give expression to our inherited doctrines and customs, 
but we are one after all, and in the last analysis it is simply the 
church of Christ that moves forward in the host of the Almighty. 

There are two great parades every year which are worthy 
of our notice : Every June, the month of roses, we literally 
drum our children out of their Sunday School rooms to join 
in the parade of the Sunday School universal. We want to 
show the people the jewels of our homes and the jewels of our 
schools, and we join in this great company with banners and 
flags, all denominations coming together in a demonstration for 
Christ and his church. And then again, every October we wit- 
ness the parade of what is called the Holy Name Society — a 
great body of men who are willing to acknowledge the holy name 
of Jesus and their faith in it, move to the park where they are 
not ashamed to bow the knee and wait for the benediction, and 
then arise and sing the song of the church in united chorus. 

That which we see visuallv we see in the imagination of the 
heart. As the church of God moves out at the sound of the 
drum beat of the truth we take our places in the line of a unified 
host, believing in Christ and his church, believing in righteous- 
ness for the community, believing in peace for the world. We 
hold ourselves in readiness after we have gone out of the church 
to give expression to this faith which we have learned in the 
church. 

189 



This, then, is what the spirit of Thomas Abbey speaks to 
us after a lapse of 150 years ; we stand here to-day as our fathers 
stood in the Revolutionary struggle. We would be Minute Men, 
we would answer the call of our Lord, and we would go out 
when it is necessary, as we come in to get our inspiration and 
our life. May we thus day by day wait upon God for that 
inspiration and that command. I think it is a beautiful thought. 
As General Washington waited for his army coming up from all 
New England and from all the Middle States and received them 
company by company and aligned them into regiments, so the 
great Captain of our Salvation is waiting for his host. Let him 
not wait in vain for the battle is on and "Onward, Christian 
soldiers" must be the note to which we march, and "forward 
be our watchword" is the inspiration of our intent and purpose. 
May God help us to follow the drumbeat of the great Captain 
of our Salvation in the advance upon the very bulwarks of the 
foe. 




THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM 
'A battered drum that bore a painted unicorn." 



190 



1775 AND 1916 

By Herbert L. Bridgman. 

[Leading Editorial in the Brooklyn Standard Union on Sunday, 

November 12, 1916.] 

The Abbey Memorial dedication in the ancient and peaceful 
Connecticut town, the other day, bears a message and points a 
moral of far more than personal or historic import. Ancestor 
worship, a religion in China, has never, and for very obvious 
reasons, prospered in this country, and while Enfield's incident is 
a rare and generous exhibition of filial loyalty, it might, if that 
were all there were to it, be dismissed with formal record and 
respectful appreciation. America is yet too young, too rapidly 
growing and changing to pay homage to mere heredity and line- 
age, and, besides that, the doctrines upon which independence 
was based and declared disputed and affronted all which had 
been accepted as to the divine right of kings or the sanctity of 
institutions merely because they were established and rested 
upon descent and tradition. Rightly interpreted, the voices from 
the Connecticut hills, whether it is the echo of Captain Abbey's 
"unicorn" drum, almost a century and a half ago, calling his 
neighbors and fellow townsmen to arms, or the eloquent words 
of yesterday's speakers, are in tune with the chorus heard to-day 
in every corner of the land and which, day after to-morrow, will 
proclaim a new and greater Americanism. 

Considered from this point of view the memorial performs 
a distinct public service, and it is to the credit of those loyal 
descendants to whom it is due that this personification of the true 
American idea was one of their principal reasons and purposes. 
Strangers and aliens by birth and blood, new generations which 
know not Joseph, are filling up the valley of the Connecticut and 
all the other rivers of the Atlantic slope, crowding out and to the 
wall the older families whose forbears made and gained Ameri- 
can independence, and no more effective instruction and object 
lesson in the meaning and import of republican institutions can be 
given. The silent, speaking statute of a typical soldier of the Rev- 
olution tells far better than words what manner of men were 
those who laid the foundations on which we build and sowed the 
seed of which all who come to our shores may reap. Whatever it 
may do for the natives who pass that way, no foreigner, Pole, 
Hungarian, Slav or Italian, and the valley and villages count 
them by thousands, will look upon Captain Abbey in enduring 

191 



marble without admiration for the type of men who made this 
country free for him and his posterity without pride that he may 
share their heritage and a higher appreciation of its cost and 
value. 

Enfield speaks to the nation, and its words are most timely, 
even imperative. After months of a racking and strenuous 
campaign the minor issues and feebler notes have mostly disap- 
peared. The dominant chord is American, and upon the response 
to that hangs the future. In days and scenes like these Thomas 
Abbey, and men like him, have a right to be heard and heeded. 
They were not "too proud to fight," and there were no such 
specious issues as preparedness or universal military training. 
When the news of Lexington came, though they had no country 
nor history, no ideal nor definite future, they had fixed principles, 
sense of duty and determination to defend their natural, eternal 
rights, and they translated all this into instant, effective action. 
Times change, and we change with them, but the essential ele- 
ments of human nature do not vary much with the centuries, 
and the spirit and the methods of 76 will be no less effective in 
1916 than when they were first asserted. 

These men of the Revolution who secured and bequeathed to 
us all we have worth having which we call country, were simple 
and strong, did not pose as altruists or claim to be entrusted 
with the uplift and salvation of the whole world and all future 
generations. They wrote few or no diplomatic notes, and one 
Declaration was enough for them. But the point is that when 
they declared themselves, and of right, free and independent, 
they backed it up by action and satisfied the world, and France 
in particular, that they meant what they said, and so commanded 
not only formal respect but active and invaluable armed support 
by sea and land. The time has come round again, if it is not 
already passed, when it will be necessary and wholesome to make 
the world understand that when America says anything she 
means it, and that marvelous development and prosperity have 
not smothered nor extinguished the spirit which made America 
possible. History surely repeats itself. We are far more wealthy, 
though, probably far less wicked, than the doomed cities of the 
plain, and the patriots and soldiers of the Revolution warn us 
of their fate. 

Another incident of the week strengthens and deepens the 
lesson of Enfield. No one who attended the patriotic and inter- 

192 



esting exercises commemorating the 150th anniversary of historic 
St. Paul's, on Broadway, Manhattan, in which Washington 
worshipped, but must have noticed the significant fact that the 
very old and the very young made much the larger proportion 
of the audience. In other words, the inherited American type of 
early days is fast reaching a vanishing point, if it is not already 
there, among the active, masterful men of affairs and of the 
future. Evolution has nearly completed the cycle, and a new 




Americanism, vigorous and cosmopolitan, is imperative if the 
work of the last century and a half is to be continued and the 
prestige of the nation in the world maintained. If there ever was 
a time when the principles and methods of the men of '75 taught 
a lesson, uttered a command to their descendants and all who 
have come from the uttermost parts of the earth to share with 
them the blessings of the freedom which they secured, it is here 
and now. 



193 



A WORTHY ENFIELD ABBE. 

Timothy Harlow Abbe:, 1815-1904, made a collection of 
records pertaining to the history of the family, many of which 
were used in the "Abbe Genealogy" in compiling the history of 
the Enfield branch. He also rendered to the Town of Enfield 
a great service, which is thus described by his daughter, Mrs. 
James C. Guthrie, of Springfield, Mass. : 

"In our village the only place where young men could con- 
gregate was the general store and saloon combined. My parents 
knew the fatal attraction of the place and to counteract its influ- 
ence they fitted up one of our front rooms as a reading room 
and bade the boys welcome. The room was always warm, light 
and clean, and my father encouraged the boys to study history 
and current events and to learn to express themselves. He 
formed a lyceum and the neighbors were invited in to hear their 
sons debate the questions of the day. A deep thinker and a 
forceful speaker himself, he planted in the minds and hearts of 
receptive youth the pure thoughts and high ideals that were of 
untold value in character building. One of these young men, 
now a successful physician, said recently that he and his brothers 
and cousins, among whom are lawyers, doctors and successful 
business men, felt that they owed a large part of their success in 
life to the influence and encouragement of Harlow Abbe." 




The Seal of Connecticut 

194 



THE WINDHAM ABBES. 

[With the exception of his brother and himself these names 
were selected by the late Professor Cleveland Abbe to be 
inscribed on the Enfield Memorial.] 

John Abb£, 1636-1700, was an original member of the first 
church in Windham, Connecticut. His brother, 

SamuEt, Abbe, 1646-1697, lived in Salem during the witch- 
craft trials. He testified to the good character of Rebecca 
Nourse, who was put to death. Both he and his wife testified 
against Sarah Good and he made a deposition against Mary 
Easty. 

Richard Abbe, 1682-1737 (son of John Abbe of Wind- 
ham), represented Windham in the Connecticut Legislature from 
1726 to 1737. 

Joshua Abbe, 1710-1807 (grandson of Samuel Abbe of 
Windham), was known as "King Abbe" on account of his exten- 
sive estates. He was the leader in a sect of Baptists called 
"Abbe-ites." He kept open house for religious meetings and for 
guests, among whom was "Mother" Ann Lee, founder of the 
sect of Shakers. At the age of 94 it is stated that he had 218 
living descendants. His wife, Mary Ripley, was a descendant of 
Governor William Bradford of the Mayflower, of Lion Gardiner 
of Gardiner's Island, of Lieutenant William Backus, the founder 
of Norwich, Connecticut, and other Colonial celebrities. Their 
son, 

Shubaee Abbe, 1744-1804, was graduated at Yale in 1764 
and served several terms in the Connecticut Legislature. Their 
daughter, 

Rachel Abbe, 1738-1795, was unfortunately omitted in 
the inscriptions on the Enfield Memorial, but was most worthy 
of commemoration there. She has, however, in Woodstock, 
Connecticut, a lasting memorial of her patriotism. In 1766 she 
married Samuel McClellan, who had served as ensign and lieu- 
tenant in the French War and was wounded in battle. At the 
Lexington Alarm she aided in fitting out her husband and the 
troop of cavalry which he commanded at Bunker Hi 1 l. In honor 
of the rising of the nation she set out memorial trees. Four 
sapling elms were brought on horseback from the old Windham 
homestead and transplanted into the soil of Woodstock, two in 
front of her home and two on the slope of the adjoining com- 
mon. Nurtured with care, they soon took root and flourished, 

195 



and for nearly a century and a half have told the story of Lex- 
ington and Concord. True trees of liberty, they have grown up 
with the nation and still stand in majestic beauty, living witnesses 
to the patriotism and devotion of Rachel Abbe, wife of General 
Samuel McClellan of the Revolution, and great-grandmother of 
General George B. McClellan of the Civil War. 




V^V' 



Henry Abbey, 1842-1911, was the author of several volumes 
of verse. William Cullen Bryant paid tribute to his "affluent 
fancy" and Charles G. Leland wrote that Mr. Abbey, for his 
poem "Ralph," deserved ''permanent prominence in the Ameri- 
can Parnassus." 




Dr. Robert Abbe, 1852, has a world-wide reputation as one 
of America's most eminent surgeons. His wife, Catherine 
Amory Bennett, was the widow of Courtlandt Palmer, founder 
of the Nineteenth Century Club. She founded the City History 
Club of New York and is its president. 



196 



Professor Cleveland Abbe, 1838-1916, died on October 28, 
1916, just one week before the dedication of the Entield 
Memorial, in which he took so deep an interest, and three weeks 
prior to the publication of the ''Abbe Genealogy," on which he 
had labored for more than half a century. His eminence as a 
scientist was recognized by the degrees of doctor of laws con- 
ferred by the University of Michigan in 1888, and by the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1896. The Symons Memorial 
Gold Medal was awarded to him by the Royal Meteorological 
Society of England in 1912, and the Marcellus Hartley Memorial 
Medal by the American National Academy of Sciences in 1916 
"for eminence in the application of science to the public wel- 
fare." He was also an officer of the Academv of France. 






From the bust by the late Onslow Ford 

Edwin Austin Abbey, 1852-1911, at 21 became the humor- 
ous illustrator of the "Editor's Drawer" in Harpers Magazine ; 
later he illustrated Herrick, Goldsmith and Shakespeare, but he 
won greatest fame as a painter. His chief works are the "Holy 
Grail" series in the Boston Public Library, the murals in the 
State Capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the coronation 
of Edward VII. He was a member of the English Royal 
Academy. His sense of humor was acute and he originated the 
slang phrase, "chestnut." He always gave credit for anything 
that he accomplished to his grandfather, Roswell Abbey, a Phila- 
delphia merchant of fine artistic feeling. This devotion to 
grandparents seems to be a characteristic Abbey trait. 

197 



AGREEMENT ENTERED INTO BY THE FIRST EC- 
CLESIASTICAL SOCIETY OF ENFIELD TO ADMIN- 
ISTER THE FUND PROVIDED FOR THE CARE 
AND MAINTENANCE OF THE ABBEY 
MEMORIAL. 

Whereas, Mr. Alden Freeman, of the City of East Orange, 
Essex County, New Jersey, has agreed to pay to the First Ec- 
clesiastical Society of Enfield, Connecticut, the sum of five hun- 
dred dollars, in trust, to pay the income arising therefrom for 
the maintenance of the Abbey Memorial, in Enfield, Conn. ; and, 

Whereas, The said Alden Freeman has agreed to increase 
said payment by one thousand dollars ($1,000), to the amount 
of fifteen hundred dollars ($1500), on condition that the said 
First Ecclesiastical Society will cause the lawn in front of the 
First Congregational Church in the Town of Enfield, Conn., and 
surrounding the memorial, to be graded and seeded and to lay 
a new cement walk from the entrance of the church to the road- 
way, as early in the spring of 1917 as conditions will permit, 
said grading, seeding and laying of the said walk to be done at 
the expense of the said First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield. 

Now, Therefore, The said First Ecclesiastical Society of 
Enfield, Conn., hereinafter referred to as the party of the first 
part, in consideration of the premises, and the said sum of 
fifteen hundred dollars ($1500), lawful money of the United 
States, to it in hand paid by Alden Freeman, of the City of East 
Orange, County of Essex and State of New Jersey, hereinafter 
referred to as the party of the second part, the receipt whereof is 
hereby acknowledged, does promise and agree to grade the 
grounds surrounding the memorial, and known as the "Town 
Green," and particularly that part thereof which lies in front 
of the church and the old Town Hall, which is located on the 
opposite side of the roadway, and to cause the same to be seeded 
and a lawn made, and to lay a new cement walk from the entrance 
of the church to the macadam roadway ; said work to be done at 
the expense of the said First Ecclesiastical Society, and out of 
moneys other than said sum of fifteen hundred dollars ($1500), 
or any part thereof, or the interest thereon. 

And the said First Ecclesiastical Society further agrees, 
in consideration of said sum of $1500, to hold said sum of $1500 
as a fund, in trust, to be known as "The Alden Freeman Fund," 
and to invest it according to the laws of the State of Connecti- 

198 



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cut and regarding trust funds investments ; and to use the income 
derived therefrom for the following purposes, and no other, 
viz. : 

To expend one-third (1-3) of the annual income arising 
therefrom in the maintenance, cleaning and repairing of the 
Abbey Memorial, in front of said church, including the seats, 
paved center and the monument, as it may become, from time to 
time, necessary so to do ; and in case, during any one year, said 
monument shall require no expenditure for its maintenance, 
repair or cleaning, then said one-third of the annual income shall 
be reinvested and allowed to accumulate until such time as its 
use is necessary for the above mentioned purposes. 

To expend two-thirds (2-3) of the annual income arising 
therefrom, or so much thereof as shall be necessary, in the upkeep 
and further improvement of the grounds surrounding said 
memorial, and known as "The Town Green," and particularly 
that part thereof which lies in front of the church and the old 
Town Hall, which is located on the opposite side of the road- 
way ; and in case, during any one year, it shall not be necessary to 
expend in the upkeep and further improvement of the grounds 
the said entire two-thirds of the annual income arising from said 
fund, then any balance of said two-thirds portion of the income 
remaining unexpended shall be applied to that third of the annual 
income and expended in the maintaining, cleaning and repairing 
of the memorial ; or in case, during any year, that there be any 
such surplus from the two-thirds portion of the annual income, 
said balance shall be reinvested and allowed to accumulate until 
such time as its use is necessary in the maintenance, cleaning and 
repairing of the monument. 

If, in any one year, the repairs on the memorial shall require 
more than the accumulated one-third of the annual income 
therein provided for that purpose, it shall be the duty of the 
said First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield, and it hereby does 
agree, to expend all the income for that year on the memorial 
instead of on the grounds. 

If at any time the grounds surrounding the monument or 
in the vicinity thereof, belonging to the Town of Enfield, and 
known as the "Town Green," are maintained and kept up at 
public expense, then and in such event all of the income arising 
from said trust fund of $1500 for such period as said "Town 
Green" is maintained and kept up at public expense, shall be 

200 




P. J. ROGERS, OF THOMPSONVILLE, CONNECTICUT, SETTING 
THE ABBEY MEMORIAL 




reserved and applied only to the maintenance and repair of the 
monument. 

Nothing herein contained shall be deemed, however, to bind 
the First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield to expend in any one 
year more than the total accrued income on said trust fund of 
$1500, which it may have on hand; nor shall anything herein con- 



202 



tained be deemed to authorize the expenditure of any of said 
income arising from said trust fund for the purpose of the 
removing snow or ice from the walk leading from the roadway to 
the church, or from the seats, or any of the area contained therein. 

This agreement shall be binding upon the successors and 
assigns of the said First Ecclesiastical Society of Enfield, Conn. 

In Witness Whereof the First Ecclesiastical Society of 
Enfield, Connecticut, has caused these presents to be signed by 
its Committee, and its corporate seal to be affixed hereto, this 
1 2th day of March, 19 17. 

FIRST ECCLESIASTICAL SOCIETY 



BY 



ALLEN B. HATHAWAY 
J. WARREN JOHNSON 
WM. H. WHITNEY, Jr. 



L. P. ABBE 

WARREN B. JOHNSON 

FRANK J. PEASE 



In the Presence oe: 
Jerry J. Chapin, Thomas L. Kenny, Mrs. 
Belle K. Hathaway. 



F. J. Peask, 




DETAIL OF SEATBACK IN THE EXEDRA 

The Tower of London typifies the autocratic rule which John Abbey turned his 

back on when he sailed from London on January 2, 1634. 



203 




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ENFIELD TOWN HALL 




LETTERING AND DETAILS OF THE BASE OF THE PEDESTAL 



ABBEY MEMORIAL IN ENGLAND. 
[Cable to The New York Times.] 

London, March 13, 1917. — Walter Hines Page, the Amer- 
ican Ambassador, this afternoon delivered an address at the un- 
veiling in St. Paul's Cathedral of a memorial tablet to the late 
Edwin A. Abbey. Princess Louise, the Duchess of Argyll 
(daughter of Queen Victoria, sister of Edward YII and herself 
an artist of merit), unveiled the memorial to the genius of the 
great American mural painter. 

Ambassador Page sketched the career of the artist from the 
days of his training in Philadelphia to the accomplishment of his 
best achievements in England. 

"This tablet,'' said the Ambassador, "is another link in the 
endless chain that binds all parts of the English-speaking world 
together and will forever hold them true to their common high 
ideals." 

-*» ET '*** o. 




The Order of the Military Society of the War of 1812. 
(See page 121) 

If we mean to support the liberty and independence which 
have cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must 
drive far away the demon of party spirit. — George Washington. 

Let us forget parties and think of our country. That coun- 
try embraces both parties. We must endeavor therefore to save 
and to benefit both. This cannot be while political delusions 
array good men against each other. — Gouverneur Morris. 

Then none was for a party; 

Then all were for the state; 
Then the great man helped the poor, 

And the poor man loved the great. 

— Macaulay's "Horatius." 

207 



PRESIDENT WILSON ON LIBERTY AND PEACE. 

Did you ever stop to think just what it is that America 
stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it 
is the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, 
her assistance, her encouragement, have thrilled two continents in 
this western world with all those fine impulses which have built 
up human liberty on both sides of the water. — Pittsburg, Janu- 
ary 28, 1916. 

Why is it that men who love liberty have crowded to these 
shores? Why is it that we greet them as they enter the great 
Harbor of New York with that majestic Statue of Liberty 
holding up a torch, whose visionary beams are supposed to 
spread abroad over the waters of the world and to say to all 
men : "Come to America, where mankind is free and where 
we love all the works of righteousness and peace?" — Cleveland, 
January 29, 1916. 

There is a great responsibility in having adopted liberty as 
our ideal, because we must illustrate it in what we do. Mr. Pul- 
itzer said that there would come a day when it was perceived 
that the Goddess of Liberty was also the Goddess of Peace, and 
throughout the last two years there has come more and more 
into my heart the conviction that peace is going to come to the 
world only with liberty. 

With all due and sincere respect for those who represent 
other forms of government than ours, perhaps I may be permitted 
to say that peace cannot come so long as the destinies of men 
are determined by small groups who make selfish choices of 
their own. — New York, December 2, 1916. 

When the people of Central Europe accept the peace which 
is offered them by the Allies, not only zvill the allied peoples be 
free, as they have never been free before, but the German people, 
too, zvill find that in losing the dream of an empire over others, 
they have found s elf -g over nnment for themselves. 

David Lloyd George on Lincoln's Birthday, T917. 



208 




VIEW FROM THE PORTICO OF THE ENFIELD CHURCH 

Photographed by deWitt C. Ward 




ENFIELD CHURCH AND THE ABBEY MEMORIAL 



The sentence in American history that I am proudest of is in the 
Declaration of Independence where the writers say that a decent respect 
for the opinion of mankind demands that they state the reasons for what 
they are about to do. 

Woodrow Wilson, June 30. 1916. 

President Wilson States the Purposes for Which the 
Democratic Peoples of the World Are Fighting Against 
the Autocratic Governments of Central Europe. 

[Address to the Congress of the United States on April 2, 
1917, advising the declaration of a state of war against the Ger- 
man government.] 

To fight for the ultimate peace of the world and for the lib- 
eration of its peoples, the German peoples included ; for the rights 
of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere 
to choose their way of life and of obedience. 

The menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence 
of autocratic governments, backed by organized force which is 
controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of the people. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except 
by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic govern- 
ment could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its cove- 
nants. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor 
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to 
any narrow interest of their own. 

The great, generous Russian people have been added, in all 
their native majesty and might, to the forces that are fighting for 
freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit 
partner for a League of Honor. 

Prussian autocracy was not and never could be our friend. 
Its spies were here even before the war began ; and it is a fact 
proved in our courts of justice that intrigues to disturb the peace 
and dislocate the industries of the country have been carried on 
under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial 
Governnment. 

The world must be made safe for democracy. 

These words represent the faith which inspires and sustains 
our people in the tremendous sacrifices they Jiavc made and are 
still making. They also believe that the unity and peace of man- 
kind can only rest upon democracy. 

To all these the Prussian military autocracy is an implacable 
foe. 

— Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, April 6, 1917. 

211 



Died on the Field of Honor in France Fighting for Freedom 

LIEUTENANT EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY, 2nd, 

of Philadelphia, enlisted early in the war in the Canadian Engineers. 
On April 19, 1917, he was reported "missing" in the fighting which 
followed the taking of the famous Vimy Ridge by the Canadian 
troops. Later it was announced that he was " killed in action." He 
was the son of William Burling Abbey, of Mt. Holly, New Jersey, 
grandson of Rev. John Kerfoot Lewis, Chaplain in the United States 
Army, and namesake of his uncle, Edwin Austin Abbey, the celebrated 
mural painter. 




Head of Jefferson used on all diplomas issued by the 
University of Virginia, of which he was the founder. 

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, 
who, in the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed the belief in 
democracy for which all the free peoples of the earth are fight- 
ing today. 

Lincoln declared that all the political sentiments he enter- 
tained sprang from the Declaration of Independence, and now 
President Wilson is leading the American people in a glorious 
crusade to make all the peoples of the world as free as ourselves 
to determine their own political destinies. 

Romanoff autocracy is dead in Russia. 

Sic semper tyrannis. 

HOHENZOLLERNI ET HAPSBVRGI DELENDI SVNT. 

"The world must be made safe for democracy." 

Thy spirit, Thomas Jefferson, is alive in the hearts of all 
free men today. 

Those about to die for freedom, salute thee, mighty shade! 

[Inscription attached to a wreath of laurel placed on the grave of Jefferson at 
Monticello, April 24th, 1917.] 



213 



DOWNFALL OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS AND 

RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE FORETOLD BY 

A PRUSSIAN PHILOSOPHER. 

An unjust enemy is one whose publicly expressed will, 
whether in word or deed, betrays a maxim which, if it were taken 
as a Universal rule, would make a state of peace among the nations 
impossible. 

Such is the violation of public treaties, with regard to which 
it may be assumed that any such violation concerns all nations by 
threatening their freedom, and that they are thus summoned to 
unite against such a wrong, and to take away the power of com- 
mitting it. 

But this does not include the right to partition and appropri- 
ate the country so as to make a State, as it were, disappear from 
the earth, for this would be an injustice to the people of that 
State, who cannot lose their right to unite into a commonwealth 
and to adopt such a new constitution as by its nature would be 
unfavorable to the inclination for war. 

[Eternal Peace, Page 159. World Peace Foundation. Im- 
manuel Kant.] 

THE WILL TO POWER 

The ancient truth still runs its course. 
If you adopt the rule of Force 
And boldly seek your chosen goal, 
You risk your own, your all — your Soul ! 

Goethe's Faust, 2d part, Act V. 



214 



THE VERDICT OF M \XKI\I) 

The Declaration of Independence was really written in the 
blood of the patriots who fell at Lexington. To establish these 
principles in the new world our forefathers fought from 1/75 to 
1783; to establish the same principles throughout the rest of the 
world all free peoples are fighting today. Although we are fight- 
ing the most efficient and least scrupulous tyranny that ingenuity 
and persistence have ever devised, the result is not in doubt, 
although the struggle may be long. A vast majority of mankind 
are giving evidence that they prefer death and annihilation rather 
than to submit to the Kaiser. As a slaughterer of innocents he 
has out-Heroded Herod ; as a concocter of massacres he has out- 
Neroed Xero ; for callousness of mind and meanness of spirit he 
has outdone all the sceptered monsters of ancient and modern 
times. He and his ilk appear to be anti-Christ and the Heast 
foretold of the prophets as the quintessence of evil. The world 
despises this imperial vampire even more than it fears him. but if 
the world is to be made safe for democracy the Kaiser and his 
brood must be exterminated, root and branch. The blood of 
slaughtered millions cries from the earth which he has defaced. 
Incomparably more guilty than Charles I. of England or Louis 
XVI. of France, it is the verdict of mankind that William II. of 
Germany must expiate his crimes against mankind. 

The remedy for the evils of democracy is more democracy. 
— De Tocqueville. 



21; 



WHAT AMERICA IS FIGHTING FOR, 

America is not the name of so much territory. It is a living 
spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bitter ex- 
perience, a living spirit which has purpose and pride and con- 
science — knows why it wishes to live and to what end ; knows 
how it comes to be respected of the world and hopes to retain 
that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man 
as its Old and New Testament. IT IS MORE PRECIOUS 
THAT THIS AMERICA SHOULD LIVE THAN THAT 
WE SHOULD LIVE. 

The world of Christ — a neglected but not rejected Christ — 
has come face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed 
to win by force. 

We fight with the world for an honest world, in which 
nations keep their word, a world in which nations do not live by 
swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the 
ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of Nature 
instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the 
spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition of the 
philosophy of a few shall not make miserable all mankind, for 
a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, 
the system or the State. — Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the In- 
terior, June 4, I9I/. 

[An English poet's vision of the great war and its ending — a 
prophecy made 75 years ago.] 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ; 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly 
dew 

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing 
warm, 

With the standards of th,e Peoples plunging through the thunder- 
storm ; 

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were 
furled 

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, 

— Temryson's Locksley Hall, 1842, 



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